


Who Passes the Sentence

by emmaliza



Series: The Kings of Winter [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (not among the starks tho don't worry), Ableism, Character Death, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Class Issues, Conflicting Accounts, Family Secrets, Feudalism, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Justice, Misogyny, Past Child Abuse, Period-Typical Sexism, Power Dynamics, Pre-A Game of Thrones, Pre-Series, Rape Culture, Violence, Xenophobia, enough foil to bring down the illuminati
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-19 06:18:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 33,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11307459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaliza/pseuds/emmaliza
Summary: "He's your bannerman. Surely it's your responsibility?"Ned takes three of his children to a wedding. It proves quite a trying experience.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Initially, this was inspired by a prompt asking for a The Celebration AU, however it wound up not really fitting the details of that prompt at all. In particular, it's full of OCs for thematic reasons, because god help me, I think I'm doing An Art Thing. This might just be the second part of a thematic trilogy I may or may not ever finish.

“Remind me again why you must go?”

Ned sighs as he folds a fur, perhaps the only one he owns light enough for summer in the south (although Catelyn, the Riverlands girl, can't bring herself to consider where he's going truly _south_ ), into his trunk. “Lord Skyer is an old friend,” he tells her, leaning over to kiss her brow. “He fought loyally by my side, and Robert's. He wrote specifically requesting my presence.”

“But it's not his wedding,” Cat says, and she knows she sounds a little petulant for a woman of her years, but still, the point should be raised. “It is quite odd for him to invite you to another man's lands.”

“Lady Amaeda wrote to me too,” says Ned, and Cat frowns. That seems odd. Has Ned ever met Amaeda Skyer? Cat doesn't think her father ever brought her to Winterfell – Cat doesn't think her father has ever visited Winterfell. “They both want me there, and I feel obliged to them. Besides, with the boy... I thought the children would be...”

Cat flinches a little. Ned has a point. It is tragic, what happened to that family, so shortly after the Lady of the House as well, and their heir... quite right, the boy should have other children about him, if only for a few weeks; Robb to look up to and learn from, Bran to laugh and play with. It must be so hard for such a child to _be_ a child, and Cat is loathe to deny him the chance. It would even probably be good for the boy to meet Sansa, to learn how to speak to a lady young – although she is not thrilled by the idea someone might wish to make a match between them. Still, Lord Skyer might be a fool if he did not at least try.

“Very well then,” she sighs, and Ned smiles at her. “Still: weeks of travel for days where you should be. It seems disproportionate.”

“Well until I sprout wings...” Ned chuckles. Cat returns it. See, that's the one thing about the Targaryens they never say – everyone says the dragons were fearsome weapons of war. No-one discusses how damned convenient they must have been. “I promise I'll be back before the next moon.”

A promise, but a threat also. _My son will be here when I return._ Part of Cat wants to bristle in indignation – what, does Ned think as soon as he is not looking her rage will be too much and she will throw the boy down a well? Perhaps she has not always been as kind as she could, but still, she has given him no reason to fear her. She hopes she hasn't, in any case.

“Have you spoken again to Arya?” she asks. Ned chuckles again.

“I've tried, but she will not listen. I don't think I should push anymore,” says Ned. “Besides, it would probably be wrong of me to steal all your children from you.”

Cat says nothing. In truth, she doubts Ned has pushed as hard as he could – she suspects he wants to leave Arya here, just in case. _A month alone with his bastard, and my daughter as his stalwart shield._ She's trying not to be petty. She knows Ned's not doing it to punish her. And yet, that is much the effect.

She sighs and leans back into her bedcovers. “I will miss you.” Suddenly she remembers the first time she said she'd miss him, the first time he left her, barely two weeks after he'd met her. She did not mean it then. She means it now. Still, it's only a wedding; she need not fear he won't come back.

(Although she may do anyway.)

Ned smiles at her. “I know, Cat,” he says, and leans down to kiss her brow. “I will return, I promise you.”

“Promises, promises,” she smiles, old words ringing in her ear: _we will be wed when I return._

* * *

“It's such a beautiful story – a wildling savage, barely more than a beast, but he saw the graceful noble lady and lost his heart. You'd think such a brute would simply steal the girl for his own, but no, he wooed her softly with words and deeds, until she fell madly in love with him and agreed to leave it all behind to be his wife. They almost starved as they made their way south, but then they stumbled upon a field...”

Arya has long since stopped paying attention to Sansa's blathering, and so she's caught unawares when a handful of snow pinched off the windowsill – too light and fluffy to really form a proper snowball – smacks against her arm. “Ow!” she cries, more out of shock and cold than actual pain. She immediately goes return in kind, but then realises she's nowhere near the windowsill or the snow, and so she then has to look around for something she can throw.

Sansa is pouting. “You're not listening to me.”

Arya shrugs. “No. You're boring.” Sansa scowls and grabs another handful of snow to launch at her, but Arya ducks out of the way in time. “Sansa, you've told me this story five times already. Aren't you bored of it?”

“No,” Sansa insists. “It's a good story.”

Admittedly, their definitions of a good story have long since differed. Arya isn't interested in the Skyers and their flowers and their romantic origins – it was one of the reasons she didn't want to come actually; they sounded like a house full of Sansas. One Sansa was just plenty, thank you.

That, and Jon. He told Arya she ought to go, to be a good little lady like he parents would want, but he looked so relieved when she said she wouldn't.

“I can't believe you don't want to go,” Sansa sneers. “They say the Bluebell is so beautiful. And her, Lady Amaeda... they say she has rivers of rose-gold for hair, eyes like the sea, skin as white as porcelain...”

 _Do you like pretty girls that much?_ she considers asking, just to see the look on Sansa's face, but she bites back her words. Making snide remarks about pretty girls is something Greyjoy does to her when he's drunk, and Arya still doesn't understand what he means by it. She ought to insult people with insults she understands. “Do you only like her because she looks like you?”

“No!” Sansa insists. “I don't look anything like that.” But she does – red hair, blue eyes, pretty. Arya does her best not to pout. “They say she's a most elegant and charming lady. Perhaps you could learn something.”

“Who says that?” Arya asks, doing her best not to rise to the bait.

“They do!”

She raises an eyebrow. “...Whatever. Have fun with your princess. _I'm_ going to be the Stark in Winterfell.” She puffs her chest out proudly.

Sansa gives her a withering look. “You know that's meant to be a boy, right?”

She shrugs. “Robb's busy, he's going with you.”

“I think technically Rickon is the Stark in Winterfell.”

Arya makes an indignant noise. “He's just a baby!”Although he's nearing three years now, but close enough. “If the wildlings invade, I'll be in charge. I'll have to fight them off, and everyone will say I'm a hero.”

Sansa frowns. “No, Mother will have to fight them off,” she says. “Or Ser Rodrik. Or Jeyne's father.”

Arya pouts. “Why do you have to ruin all my fun?”

* * *

“I yield!” Robb cries as Jon backs him up against a bale of hay, and Jon would like to take pride in the victory, but he suspects Robb does so as much because he knows he ought to be off packing and not playing as because he's genuinely been beaten. Nonetheless, Jon removes his sword from Robb's chest, allows him to sit and catch his breath, laughing at nothing. It's not a proper sparring match, just them fooling about with practice swords they've long since (alright, about sixteen moons since) outgrown. “Are you angry at me about something?”

Jon blinks, puzzled. “What would I be angry at you about?”

Robb shrugs. “I don't know,” he says. “That I'm leaving you all alone in the dark, nasty castle?”

Jon rolls his eyes. Robb says it as a jape, but he can't quite hide the concern in his voice. And Jon appreciates that concern, really he does, but he can't help but feel a little condescended to also. “I'll be fine, don't worry,” he says. “We're the same age Robb, you don't have to play the big brother with me.”

Robb sighs. “If you say so.” He doesn't realise that he actually is older – he must be, if Father sired him just before he left for war and sired Jon after. But Jon's always been better than him at sums. “I suppose you'll make little Arya protect you?”

“Your mother's not that frightening,” Jon says. Really, to Lady Catelyn's credit she never seeks him out to inflict her contempt upon. Mostly, she does her best to avoid him, and in a castle this size her best is actually rather good – sometimes whole weeks will go by where they never see each other except at meals. Jon doesn't expect to see much of her while Father and the others are gone, although mayhaps she might keep Arya closer to her side than she would normally, for fear of Jon poisoning the little girl's mind against her.

Anyway, it's not like Robb could stay even if Jon asked him too. Everyone is very insistent he go, for the sakes of the new Skyer heir, now missing his own brother and so borrowing Jon's. Jon wonders if that isn't crueller, to give the boy someone to slot in his brother's place and then take him away again a few days later, but he holds his tongue.

Jon suspects Robb is nervous, though he'd never say as such out loud. It's the first time he's left the North since he was less than a year old, and all eyes will be on him, if he's really the example the young lord Skyer needs. _Father must have great faith in him,_ Jon thinks, but of course Father has faith in Robb, it's simply a question of whether Robb can live up to that faith.

Sometimes Jon wonders if that's why Robb is so quick to make sure he's alright – if it's really Jon that needs worrying about. He isn't sure how he feels about that.

* * *

“But I want to ride with you and Father!” Bran insists, to Robb's distinctly unimpressed look. “Come on. I'm a better rider than you were at my age!”

He wasn't actually born when Robb was his age, but Jon says it took him quite awhile to get the hang of riding. Either way though, Robb doesn't rise to the bait. “Yes, but you're not my age, are you?” he says. “Now get in the litter.”

He opens his mouth to protest again, but before he can Robb sighs and picks him up, hoists him into the air. “In you go,” he says, and that is not fair – Robb never agrees to pick him up when Bran actually wants him to, he says he's gotten too heavy. Liar.

Bran is unceremoniously plopped down on one of the benches, Sansa sitting across from him and looking even more unimpressed than Robb, who Bran is still pouting out as he closes the door. “But Robb...”

“Don't you 'but Robb' me,” he says. Then he sighs again. “Tell you what, next castle we stop at, I promise to take you out riding in their woods. Alright?”

“...Fine,” Bran grumbles, although he's still not happy.

“Robb? Are you ready?” Father has just appeared behind them, and Bran considers appealing to his mercy instead, but he'd probably be even less successful.

“In a moment, Father,” says Robb, and he gives his younger siblings one last smile before he runs off to saddle his horse.

Once he and Sansa are alone in the carriage, she lets out a deep sigh at him. “Honestly Bran, what have you done to your hair? It looks like a bird's nest. I expect that from Arya, not you.”

He pouts again, shaking some of the leaves out of his hair. “I was climbing,” he says. “What does it matter anyway? I'm not a girl, and we won't be anywhere for days on end.”

Sansa simply rolls her eyes. “Come here.”

He doesn't get to argue before she grabs him by the hand and drags him over to her side of the carriage. Honestly, Jon and Robb and Sansa all treat him like a doll sometimes. He means to protest when she starts attacking his hair with the comb she apparently keeps on her at all times, but actually she does so rather gently, and the sensation is nice. Bran allows himself to relax against her as she teases out the knots.

He'll fall asleep if he relaxes too much though, and then she'll be annoyed with him for letting her get bored, so he does his best to talk. “Do you think the boy will look like a grumpkin?”

“Bran!” Sansa yanks at his hair with her comb, making him whine in pain. “We are to be Lord Skyer's guests, and you are not to insult his son and heir. Averick is simply a boy with a very unfortunate disease, that's all.”

For a moment, Bran's worried Mother has somehow sneaked into their carriage. He realises he's being silly though. “Sorry,” he says, abashed. He doesn't want to be mean. “Still – he can walk, right? We will be able to play?”

Sansa sighs. “I... don't know,” she admits. “But Father wants you to be a companion to this boy, at least for the next few weeks, and we both should be trying to make him proud.”

Bran sighs. He knows Sansa's right – they all have to make Father proud.

 


	2. Around

It might be for the best he didn't bring Arya, Ned thinks. If Robb, Sansa and Bran, generally the most agreeable of his children, are getting on each others nerves this much, he hates to imagine how Arya and Sansa would be bickering.

“Do you think I should stop and pick some of the bluebells to put in my hair?” asks Sansa nervously. “Would Lord Skyer like that?”

Bran, clearly losing patience, groans loudly. “Sansa, no-one cares what's in your hair,” he says. “We're almost there.”

Sansa makes an offended noise. “Well that's easy for you to say. I see you've chosen to go dressed as a wildling?” If Arya were here, Ned imagines the conversation would be very similar. Bran just grins. “Still, it would please him, wouldn't it? The bluebells are their sigil.”

“No they aren't,” says Bran. “It's a teardrop.”

“Raindrop,” says Robb.

Bran frowns at him. “What's the difference?”

“Well nothing really,” Robb admits. “But given the story about how they chose to stay here because of the rains, it would make more sense for it to be a raindrop. Who would put a tear on their banners?”

Ned does in fact know a family in the Reach just north of Dorne whose sigil was exactly that, but he opts against mentioning it. His children can bicker perfectly well on their own without him joining in.

“Well it should be a bluebell,” says Sansa. “It's what they call their castle. It's what they're famous for. Why wouldn't they make that their sigil?”

“Maybe it was hard to draw,” says Bran.

Sansa makes an unimpressed noise and Ned sighs deeply. “We're almost there,” he mutters, reassuring himself more than anything.

* * *

When they do arrive, he warns his children not to stare. He does not think they would, they're all kind and polite, but it's best they remember just in case.

Or perhaps it's not them who ought to remember.

The deformity is not as bad as the rumours said, although Ned knew the rumours were, like all rumours, mostly trash and nonsense, for how could a child so twisted in body even survive? But Averick Skyer is a very handsome boy, only little older than his Bran, with his father's rare colouring – the sparkling blue-green eyes and wisps of rose-gold hair that made maidens sigh over Tristen during the war. It is only his body that shows any flaw: the arm on one side lies withered, and the leg on the other is stunted and hangs two inches off the ground, so the boy uses a cane to walk. Still, Ned can't imagine Tristen will have too much trouble finding his son a wife, especially now the boy is heir.

Once the formal introductions are made, Tristen grins and clasps Ned warmly by the shoulder. “Ned,” he says, “it's been too long, my friend.”

In truth, Tristen was more Howland's friend than he was, but the years have a way of degrading such distinctions. “That it has. I'm afraid I rarely travel this far south.” It might have been easier for Tristen to have made the short journey to White Harbour and them all to have sailed from there, but Tristen wrote he wished to make the journey as easy as possible on his son. Ned couldn't fault him that. Tristen is still a handsome man, although being around his fortieth year has taken some toll on him – his hair is now a little red-silver as well as red-gold, his belly portrudes an inch or two over his belt. Not that Ned can judge. The years have their way with them all – at least, those who live long enough.

Lord Averick shakes Robb and Bran's hands firmly, and bows to Sansa. “My lady,” he says, and she smiles as she curtseys. Ned wonders if she thinks Averick is pretty too. He is not too much younger than her. “I welcome you to our home. I'm afraid it must be a terrible disappointment to you, we've let it get a little run down.”

_He speaks like a little lord._ Ned smiles when he remembers Robb at that age, just the same, although Averick doesn't have the years of training Robb does. Still, he seems to have slotted into his brother's role well enough – more easily than Ned did. A twinge of fear crosses his heart when he wonders, how well would Bran do, if something happened to Robb? But he shakes the thought away. What reason has he to fear that?

“Not at all, my lord. Your castle is most enchanting,” says Sansa, although he can see in her eyes she is a little disappointed – though Sansa, still more girl than maiden, is already far too much of a lady to ever say so. But she had gotten in her head an idea about the Skyers, southern beauty and glamour here in the North, and Ned couldn't bring himself to crush that dream – like he's never been able to tell her the truth of King's Landing, the heat and stink and death of the capital. The Bluebell is not much of a flower at the moment, and it doesn't really live up to her dream, stones crumbling and parapets unmanned. Lord Skyer has not been so rich these past few years as he once was, a victim of the long summer.

Tristen chuckles and claps his son on the shoulder. “This one should have been born a stonemason. He's always on at me about everything we should build, repair, restore. Bran the Builder come again, I swear to the Gods.”

Ned can't help but smile as Bran makes an irritated noise, having his name stolen by this interloper. “I'm only trying to help you,” Averick smiles sweetly at his Father. Tristen laughs again.

“Well then, go on you, show these ones to their rooms.” He nods toward Robb, Sansa and Bran. Averick grins and extends a gentlemanly arm – his good arm – to Sansa, which she takes. They walk away, and as the go Tristen watches them, chuckling. “He's a real reformist, the next Jaehaerys the Conciliator. Still, I mean to have a few more years lording in me before he can get his teeth in it.” He laughs fondly. “Come Ned, come walk with me in the godswood. We have a lot to catch up on.”

* * *

In the godswood, they discuss matters of state and matters of their families – or Ned's family, for he knows better than to breech the subject of Tristen's. Except, of course, his daughter's impending marriage: “You think I'm a fool, don't you?” he asks Ned.

Ned blinks, puzzled. “Why would I think you're a fool?”

“For allowing my only daughter to marry beneath her station?”

Oh. Ned didn't think of that – Lady Amaeda is to wed a man of Longthorpe, vassal to House Sunderland, who are vassals to House Arryn, who are vassals to the king. Her father is only a vassal to Ned, who is vassal to the king. One level higher. And in many ways, the Skyers have been vassals to the Manderlys for years now, for when you have a city like White Harbour just above you, you don't try and spite it – however the Skyers had the pride wounded enough to be forced to admit it.

And more than that – Lady Amaeda's groom is a sisterman. In truth, Ned has never actually met a sisterman, but people do say awful things about them – the same way they say things about the Crannogmen, and the Dornish, and in the South, the way they say things about Northmen. Ned wonders how many fathers would consent to this match.

“You didn't even realise, huh?” asks Tristen. “Honestly, Ned.”

Ned does his best not to blush, not to feel like a boy of seventeen again, green and unready upon the battlefield.

“You're right though,” says Tristen. “I am a fool. I don't know what I was thinking, taking her to a tourney. I suppose – since Aleas, she was so – and of course some bloody knight would fall in love with her. I mean, I'm not blind, I know what she looks like.” He sighs. “The lad is handsome, I'll grant him that. Haven't spotted a bit of webbing.” Ned wonders if Tristen should make such japes, given his own son's problems. “And he fought for her hand so valiantly, he almost won the whole bloody thing. My Amy always was willful, always had a head full of songs. If I'd said no she'd have simply run off with him. And how could I?” he smiles. “My little girl. I want her to be happy.”

* * *

They leave the godswood shortly after that, make their way across the grounds. While they walk, a well comes into view, and Ned stops for a second. _You must not stare,_ he tells himself, but he can't seem to help it. He knows Tristen can't do anything about where the well is, but still, its just standing there seems... cruel.

“Ned?”

He starts back to reality. “Forgive me,” he says gruffly, averting his eyes. “I shouldn't...”

“That's quite alright.” Tristen smiles sadly at him, before looking over to the well himself. “I find myself staring too.”

Ned follows his eyes. It's made from the same blue-grey stone the castle is, with a bucket and chain – the same as any other well in the Seven Kingdoms, except for one tiny detail. A series of thin white scratches on the stone, spelling out one word: _above._

“Our house words. Well, word,” says Tristen, as if he read Ned's mind. “I keep trying to understand what he meant by them. I don't know why. It's not as if knowing why he did it will bring him back, right?”

Ned is pained, and uncomfortable. “I thought – the boy's mother–?”

“Yes, it probably was her. The same way and all,” says Tristen. “They were always close. When she died, he was so – but I thought he was getting better...”

“And she – didn't–?”

“No, no, she just fell,” says Tristen. Ned wonders how he could possibly know that. “I loved my wife, but she was terribly clumsy. I used to tell her she could slip on ice in the Dornish summer.” He laughs for a second, and then tears spring to his eyes, which he tries to cover with his hand. “Forgive me.”

“That's alright,” says Ned, and nothing else.

“I remember, during the war – your father and brother, we all thought, there must be something we could say, something we could do, something that would make it better. I thought that. I didn't understand – I'm sorry, Ned.”

Ned says nothing to that either. He knew it was strange to the men the fact he never wept for his father or Brandon, never seemed to grieve them. Robert told them all he was northern, they felt things strangely, but strongly, before plying him with drink to try and pry the tears out of him, which was Robert's approach to any emotion.

But it didn't work, and Ned didn't know why. He held Benjen as he sobbed for hours before he left his little brother behind in Winterfell, but for months he just couldn't. Thinking of it now, he doesn't think he believed they were dead; he still desperately clung to the hope that they weren't truly dead, that some rumour got out of hand, and once they reached King's Landing he would find his father and brother in the dungeons, and they would be so grateful for the second son, the quiet, shy, forgotten brother rescuing them. Although Brandon might be cross about Ned stealing his wife.

It wasn't until Lyanna that he... Lyanna...

He shakes his head. His griefs are long past, and Tristen's are still fresh. The man manages to compose himself some. “Averick's talked me into knocking it down and building a new one, but until that's finished...” he sighs. “I drink the water my wife and son drowned in. Does that make me a monster?”

Ned shakes his head. “That makes you a man with only one well.” Tristen manages a faint laugh at that. Ned sighs and puts an arm around his shoulder. “Come now. Our children are waiting for us.”

* * *

The room Lord Averick leads him too isn't as nice as Bran's room back at Winterfell – it's smaller, and darker. But Bran's not going to complain. It's clean and dry, which Father always tells him is all you need in a room – _you'll appreciate that when you're older,_ he says, although Bran doesn't know why. Of course Theon Greyjoy is always on about how on Pyke they make you sleep in freezing rooms full of seawater on a bed of needles to toughen you up, but Theon is stupid and Bran doesn't listen to him.

A serving man slides Bran's trunk under bed, and Bran sits down on it, finding it delightfully soft and fluffy. That's a relief. He expects Averick to quickly find somewhere to sit also, but instead he just stands there, leaning on his cane. “So,” he says, “once you've gotten yourself settled, is there something you'd like to do while you're here?”

“Robb did promise to take us riding in your forests.” Even Sansa, who doesn't like riding, wants to go to see how pretty the bluebells are. However when Bran looks at Averick, he hesitates. “Or – if you wanted, we could do something else...”

“I can ride, Lord Stark, don't worry.”

Bran blinks. “Can you?”

“Well I'll never be a tourney knight, and I'm better sitting pillion like a girl, but yes, I can ride.” Averick smiles. “I keep asking my father to let me ride to White Harbor with him, but he won't agree. Yet.”

“Oh,” says Bran. “Sorry.”

“That's alright,” says Averick. “When I was born, everyone assumed I would never ride. Everyone assumed I would never do all sorts of things, but Father said, it was at least worth trying. And apparently, I displayed remarkable natural skill considering.”

“Considering.” Bran does consider that. “Is it not... weird? Being like you are?”

Averick raises an eyebrow. “Well I wouldn't know,” he says. “I've never been anyway else.”

Bran looks down, ashamed of his childish prying. _Sansa will think I was so rude._ “Sorry,” he mutters.

“That's alright, Lord Stark. Believe me, I hear plenty worse.”

Bran's heard plenty worse, rumours that Lord Skyer's new heir was some sort of twisted mutant, fanged and winged and unable to speak, a dangerous creature who ought to be kept under lock and key, but his father was just too soft-hearted to do so. Averick just seems like a nice boy though, and it's enough to make Bran feel guilty for even hearing those rumours. “That must be terrible,” he says.

“It is,” Averick admits, “but my father won't let anyone say such things to my face. Everything I am, I owe to him. Some men would have had me locked away, some would be tearing their hair out trying to find another heir, but he – he's never treated me as anything less than his son.”

“He sounds a good man,” says Bran.

“He is.”

There's a pause between them. _What about your brother?_ he almost asks just to fill it, but he realises how stupid that would be just in time. Averick's brother is dead, that's what about him. “Are you looking forward to the wedding?”

A troubled look crosses Averick's face. “I'm looking forward to the travel,” he says. “To meeting new people and seeing new things. I've never been outside the North. And food, I'm definitely looking forward to food.”

“Then... what aren't you looking forward to?”

Averick gives a nervous smile. “My sister?”

Bran blinks. “Don't you get on?”

Averick sighs and starts to walk across the room on his cane, joining Bran on the bed. “We're – fine, I suppose,” he says. “But she doesn't like me.”

“Is she mean to you?” asks Bran. “Because of your–?”

“Not mean,” says Averick. “Just... cold.”

 


	3. Across

The sail to Longsister is quick one, which is a good thing given how poorly two of his children cope with it. Robb fairs a little better, and Ned wonders if Theon might have taught him some trick, or if he just inherited more of his mother's riversblood, but Bran and Sansa both spent the whole journey sick and miserable. Although Ned can hardly judge, since he was no better the first time he sailed – it wasn't until Balon's rebellion he really conquered that (although he was sick on his way back from Pyke, that was less to do with the sea itself). Sansa in particular is quite stressed: “what if we get there and I'm all covered in vomit and they think I'm disgusting? What if I vomit on Lady Amaeda?!” Ned does his best not to laugh, and reassures her that if she is sick just before the disembark, of course they'll have time for her to bathe and redress herself properly before they have to meet their hosts.

_Gods, it's cold_ , thinks Ned as he steps onto the rocky shores. It's funny; you'd think, as a Northman he'd be damn near immune to the cold, but the think is, Winterfell is so far in land and so flat that there's very little wind, meaning the cold doesn't bite like it does in other place. The cold he knows best is a cold that's gentle and yielding, ever-present but never overbearing. In truth, he always found the Eyrie colder, with its blistering winds high in the rocky peaks. Longsister is more like that, icy air knocking you about so you have no break, but with the added factor of the sea spitting up at you and sinking into your bones. _Pyke was much the same,_ Ned remembers.

Cold or not, Ned has never been one for luxury, so he and Robb ride from the coast to the castle. Bran doesn't complain when he's forced into the carriage this time. Ned can see Robb shivering atop his ride, fingers in danger of being unable to clutch the reins. He almost suggests his son put another cloak on to warm him up, but he thinks better of it. Robb is almost a man grown, too old to have his parents fussing over whether he's warm enough – he would find it humiliating. Cat could get away with it, for she is his mother and that's her job, to embarrass him as much as possible, but for Ned it is different. It is Ned's task to shape his son into a man. It is Catelyn's task to keep him a boy.

They all make it to the castle in one piece – _Longsister,_ they don't bother to call it anything else, and Ned would expect that to cause confusion but perhaps on an isle this small it doesn't.

Lord Longthorpe is an aging man who still has a certain handsomeness to him, albeit a rather scruffy one, looking more likely to seduce a maid than to woo her. He reminds Ned a little of Robert. Still, he shakes Ned's hand firmly with a grin, revealing a mouth full of cracked and black teeth that do a lot to detract from his looks. “Lord Stark,” he says brightly. “An honour.”

He says no more than that. He seems a man of few words. Ned can respect that. His son – tall and lean with dark hair and eyes, a mouth full of white teeth that spread in a sweet smile, exactly the sort of man to win a lady's heart in a tourney – seems more talkative. “My lord,” says young Ennett, bowing his head to Ned. “You do us a great honour. My betrothed speaks most highly of you, I'm sure she will be delighted by your presence.”

_Your betrothed has never met me._ “Thank you, my lord,” he says, “and where is your bride?”

“In her rooms,” says Lord Rolland. “Tradition, I'm afraid. That and, I'm keeping these two away from each other. If you'd seen them, you'd understand.” Ennett blushes deeply, and Ned can relate. Rolland nods at Tristen. “I thought, if we're to be family, you'd appreciate it if I kept your daughter's virtue in tact until the bedding.”

Tristen laughs at that. “Most thoughtful of you, my lord.”

As they make their way inside, Ned notices Sansa doing her best not to pout – and failing miserably. He squeezes her hand gently. “You'll meet Lady Amaeda soon,” he promises.

“I know that,” Sansa sighs. “I just...”

Then she stops, and looks up. Ned follows her eyes, and there above them, looking out her window, is Lady Amaeda. She smiles at him.

_The Longthorpes she and Ennett sire could conquer Westeros like the Targaryens. But instead of dragons, they will have smiles._ Lady Amaeda is a great beauty, flame-like curls of yellow and red bouncing across her chest, blue-green eyes sparkling as she grins. Her looks are all her father's – Lydia Skyer, a Crakehall by birth, was tall and stocky at only four and ten, with brown hair he thinks eyes to match. In truth, he doesn't remember her well – she only visited the once, just after he returned to Winterfell after the war, and all his lords came to pay homage. After that, Tristen wrote that she could not bear the cold so far north. She had the Crakehall firmness, and Catelyn told Lord Skyer the one time they met, and she was sure Lydia would bear Tristen many healthy children. That pleased him.

If Ned were a younger man, he could imagine feeling the same way watching Lady Amaeda as he once did watching Ashara Dayne. As is, he is too old for that sort of thing, as has a wife as beautiful as any woman in Westeros. Still, he hopes she and Lord Ennett are very happy.

* * *

They are among the first guests to arrive – “We sistermen have our own way of timekeeping,” says Lord Rolland. So apart from their hosts, the only other people to ingratiate themselves among are the servants. Well, in truth, Robb does most of the ingratiating – Bran is too young, Sansa is too noble, and Ned, despite all his years, despite having led men to war and sired five children and been lord of half of Westeros for half his life, is too shy. But Robb does have a way of endearing himself to the common folk – not like Arya does; he doesn't forget all about who he is to make friends and play childish games. Robb is always very aware that he is their lord and they are his subjects and that relationship must never be replaced – and never by something such as friendship. Still, Robb has a way of making himself loved, of making the people sigh that he will be a wonderful lord someday. In truth, Ned might envy it a little, although he is glad he has such a promising heir.

Robb is talking to one of the cooks, a woman of about forty – or mayhaps thirty, and she has simply lived a hard life – with dark blonde hair and light brown eyes. “In truth, I don't think most of the castle likes her,” she's saying. “She's so haughty, locked up in her tower, and the Three Sisters remember–”

She cuts off as Ned approaches the two of them, breaking her gaze from Robb and looking up at him instead. There's a long silence as she just stares. Ned thinks he sees fear flicker in her eyes. Then, she jumps to her feet and curtseys to him. “Lord Stark,” she says.

_She knows me?_ Puzzled, Robb gets to his feet. “I hadn't gotten around to introducing myself by name,” he admits sheepishly. “But yes, this is my father, Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. I am his firstborn son and heir, Robb. Father, this is Pia. She is head cook here.”

“M'lord,” mutters Pia, more to the floor than to either. Now she seems less like a woman of forty or thirty, and more like a girl of three or four and ten.

“You knew who I was?” Ned asks curiously.

Very hesitantly, Pia looks up at him from beneath her lashes. “I recognised your look,” she says. “Your father and brother visited here once... many years ago.” Her eyes snap back to the floor. “Was a terrible thing, what the king did to them.”

A twinge of pain shoots through Ned's heart, as it always does when he remembers how Father died, how Brandon died. He does his best not to think of it when he is not honouring them in the crypts. It is hard enough to have Lyanna haunting them.

_When did they visit here?_ he wonders instead. He can't imagine a reason why they would. He doesn't remember that at all. _But I might have been in the Vale._

“Excuse me, m'lord, I have – our new lady, she needs to be cooked for.” And then she rushes off back to her cooking, leaving Ned utterly bewildered.

Robb seemingly decides to handle the situation with an uneasy laugh. _Theon might be a bad influence on him._ “So Father, I know you've warned me against gossiping,” and Ned wonders, has he warned Robb against gossiping? He knows he's warned Sansa, and to a lesser extent Bran, but it was never really necessary with Robb. But perhaps he overheard. “But I was simply trying to obtain valuable information about our hosts.”

Ned raises an eyebrow. “And did you?”

“Well... not as such, no,” he answers, and Ned has to laugh while a look of embarrassment floods Robb's face. But then, that look is replaced with a troubled one.

“Is something wrong, Robb?”

He sighs. “She didn't tell me anything all that useful, but... she did tell me that the sistermen do not like us. Northmen. She said there was a war a long time ago, and we did terrible things to them. The Rape of the Three Sisters, they call it. I... did not know of this.”

Ned winces. “Nor did I, until I was older than you.” When he was a child, he had a vague inkling of his people having once chosen to put an end to the Sisters' pillaging and piracy, but it was Jon Arryn who taught him that while most of the Vale had long since forgotten the War Across the Water, but the sistermen had the legend of Northern cruelty embedded in their hearts. It was over a thousand years ago, whatever it was, although no-one seems to agree on whether it was closer to one thousand years or two. Ned knows there is a book on the subject, somewhere, but he's never had the stomach to see if he can find a copy. “It is a terrible story, Robb, and I wouldn't want to spoil your mood for the wedding. When we return to Winterfell, I'll – I'll explain as best I can, but Maester Luwin will most likely be able to tell you more.”

Robb nods, and so the both of them leave without answers.

* * *

Other guests arrive in the days following, most from the east half of the island, or the other two sisters – Ned didn't know the three isles were big enough to have more than one house for each, but apparently they do, “though the probably don't need to,” Lord Rolland concedes with a wry smirk. Lord Torrent of Littlesister arrives, a man as little as his title would suggest, with the tiniest bit of webbing between his second and third fingers on his left hand. Lords Sunderland and Borrell arrive, Sunderland with four of his sons, Borrell with one of his daughters, both eyeing one another with contempt, to Rolland's exasperation: “two castles in one city, now who thought that was a good idea?” He then resolves himself to keeping the two apart.

Still, Ned remembers Lord Godric Borrell – vaguely, granted, and not as well as the previous Lord Borrell – and is quick to offer condolences for his father's passing. “I remember well your family's kindness,” he says. Although he doubts kindness was the true motive for it.

Lord Godric merely shrugs. “It was his decision, not mine.” He does not seem a man used to taking gratitude.

As for Lord Triston Sunderland, Ned's interactions with him mostly consist of accidentally summoning his attention when trying to talk to Tristen, which is embarrassing, and fending off his warnings that Lord Borrell plans to sabotage his ships and rob him blind, which Ned, despite telling himself to think better of trusting Borrell simply because he owes the man's house his life, can't bring himself to believe.

There are also guests from the mainland, minor lords from the North and the Riverlands – but not the Vale, for even their most impoverished lord are all too proud or too wary to deal with their bannermen. There is not a single man as highborn as Ned himself, and only one who even comes close. He takes Ned very much by surprise.

“Lord Bolton?”

“Lord Stark.” Bolton gives him the tiniest nod of the head as they meet in the hall, showing no true deference. Ned grits his teeth. He knows the Starks and the Boltons have never liked each other, but he thinks he likes the current Lord Bolton less than any of his ancestors could have liked theirs, even the ones flayed alive. It's hard not to wish the man's lands would pass to his son sooner rather than later – he remembers Domeric Bolton being a sweet lad, and he's been fostered in the Vale, so that might make an honourable man of him.

“I did not expect you here,” Ned tells him.

“I was invited by Lord Skyer,” says Bolton. “And, I presume, his daughter consented.”

Ned blinks, surprised. “Are you two well-acquainted?” he asks.

“Did you not know?” Bolton replies. “He was my foster brother.” Ned feels a little queasy. No, he did not know that. “He was a page for the Manderlys before that, and his lord father was afraid it had had too great an effect on him. He thought the boy might convert even. So he sent him to us, to get to know the true north.”

_Why did he not send him to us then?_ That worries Ned. _How did I not know this?_ Most likely, he was in the Vale at the time, but still he's always thought it his duty to be aware of the relationships among his bannerman, their rivalries and alliances, and this seems a great oversight on his part. _But why did Tristen not tell me?_ The more Ned thinks about it though, why would Tristen tell him? To tell a Stark you had been raised among the Boltons would be to make him not trust you, and in the midst of war, that was the last thing any of them had needed. Tristen's bravery on the battlefield had proven his loyalty anyway, hadn't it?

“I assume Lord Skyer invited you also?”

That snaps Ned back to reality. “Yes. Well, his daughter's letter reached me first. His came a few days later.”

“Hmm,” says Bolton before he walks away, leaving Ned deeply uneasy.

* * *

It's stupid, the way they're keeping Lady Skyer locked away as if she's a prisoner. She's not a prisoner, she's Lord Ennett's bride, and Sansa's sure they don't really have to worry about the lady giving away her maidenhead. That's not what a lady would do, especially if she's to wed in a few days anyway. At least they've given her books to read, although she was surprised to learn Lord Longthorpe kept many books at all – “Ennett's doing,” he chuckled at her when she appeared confused (and she is rather abashed to have given her surprise away). “My traders say it was a real laugh in White Harbour, the sistermen trading their fish and crab for _books_. Most northmen don't think we can read, you see, think the paper must catch and tear on our webbing.” He laughed and she blushed, apologetic for her countrymen. “But Ennett... head full of songs that one. Wants to go to the Eyrie and be a proper little knight for Lord Arryn. I'm not surprised at all he found some mainland lady to make an idol of. Though I'm a little surprised she said yes.”

“They're in love,” Sansa told him. Lord Ennett wasn't like the rest of the sistermen – salt-stained and withered, twisted and untrustworthy. He was handsome, noble, and graceful. _A prince born among savages._ Lady Skyer, like her ancestor many years ago, found goodness in a man's soul, when his blood had none.

After a few days, Sansa makes up her mind – Lady Skyer must be bored by now, and if caught, she can simply say she didn't know the rules. So, when no-one is around – which is not difficult, for even with all the guests here, Longsister seems a very empty castle – she sneaks up to her rooms, and knocks.

There's a long pause before anyone answers. “Who's there?” she asks.

Sansa is struck by the abruptness. “The lady Sansa Stark,” she says. “May I come in?”

Another long, awkward pause makes Sansa nervous, before the door slowly swings open. She enters quickly, and in her nerves she curtseys to Lady Skyer – then curses herself for the mistake; Lady Skyer is daughter to one of her father's vassals, _she_ should curtsey first. She doesn't curtsey at all, simply slams the door behind Sansa, making her jump. She doesn't look as beautiful as she did before – she's still a very pretty girl, but she holds herself stiffly and awkwardly, and her mouth that smiled so enchantingly is now curled in a sullen frown. “What do you want?”

_She has no right to speak to me such a way,_ but she forces herself to endure the rudeness, lest she descend to her level. She will speak about it with Father or Lord Ennett later. “Only to meet you, my lady,” she says, hoping this will all prove to be a misunderstanding somehow, that Lady Amaeda will become more what she imagined shortly. “I've heard so much about you, and come to admire you greatly from afar.”

Amaeda gives her a wary look. “You are a child,” she declares, and Sansa flushes in embarrassment. _Well, yes, but there's no need to point it out._ “I didn't ask Lord Stark to bring his children.”

“No, my lady,” she says. “I believe that was your father. He believed we'd be a good influence on your brother.”

“My brother,” mutters Amaeda. “I only have the one now.” Sympathy flickers on Sansa's heart – yes, that must be why she's so rude, grief for her brother. It has not been even a year yet. Sansa can't imagine the pain, none of them can – not even Father, who knows what it is to lose a brother, and a sister, but never a _twin_. Then Lady Amaeda scoffs slightly. “If I were born here, I might have none. They say the sistermen used to drown cripples at birth before we northmen put a stop to it.”

Sansa is aghast. “That's horrible!”

“Is it? Is it so much worse than letting them carry about their disease all their short, pointless lives, being a burden on the rest of us?” Sansa almost wants to slap her. Lord Averick is such a sweet boy, and happy boy too it seems, after a few minutes she barely remembered he was crippled – how can Lady Amaeda say such things? “Is it more horrible than _how_ we put a stop to it?” At that, Sansa just blinks in confusion, and Amaeda smirks. “You don't know that story, do you? The women we raped, the babes we murdered, the men we mutilated – no, the great North would never do such things. Such cruelties are for wildlings, and Ironborn, and sistermen. And yet, every woman on these isles seems to remember them.”

Sansa finds tears springing to her eyes unbidden. “Liar!” she cries, before she remembers herself. “Lady Amaeda, I know your brother – Aleas, his death, it must have been a terrible shock, but–”

“No it wasn't.” And as Sansa blinks in surprise, Amaeda turns her back on her. “I think it was inevitable. Aleas always had this attitude – he had to be the perfect lord, or else he did not deserve to live. And no-one can be the perfect lord. So what other choice did he have?”

Sansa is stunned. _How can she say such things about her own brothers?_ “You're awful,” she declares.

And then Lady Amaeda turns back to her, an inexplicable pain in her eyes. “Aye, I rather think I am,” she says. She smiles bitterly. “Perhaps next time you'll think of that before you decide to admire me.”

Sansa storms out in tears, running to her room to sob into her pillow. _She's no lady,_ she thinks. _Even Arya's more of a lady. Arya might be dirty and reckless and dress like a boy, but at least she can be nice._

Her sobbing doesn't last long before there's a knock on the door. “Sansa?” It's Robb, sounding terribly worried. Sansa doesn't answer him, she just waits until she hears the door open. Robb sighs. “What happened?”

Then Sansa pushes herself back up and looks him in the eye, she sniffs. “I went to see Lady Amaeda,” she admits, and she hopes her tears will be enough to convince him he shouldn't get her in trouble for breaking the rules. They usually are. “I just wanted to say hello. But she was – so _mean_...”

“Oh Sansa,” says Robb, and then he's by her side on the bed, wrapping a strong brotherly arm around her. Sansa leans into him. “It's alright, I promise it'll be alright. I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt you, I'm sure she'll apologise when she realises.”

Sansa shakes her head. “No, she did, she was awful...” she smothers another sob. This lady isn't worth crying over. “Why would anyone be so mean?”

Neither of them knows the answer.

 


	4. Through

Eventually, the wedding itself does happen, and they all watch as Lady Amaeda eagerly discards her blue and white tear-or-rain stained cloak for a black and green Longthorpe one. She grins throughout the ceremony, and Lord Ennett grins to see her grin, knowing she is so happy to be wedding him. It is not a bad crowd in the end, as most of the Sisters' nobility is here, for as the servants whisper, foreigners around these parts (who haven't been shipwrecked) is a novelty one must come see, and with them is a smattering of lords from the North and the Riverlands – but not the Vale proper. Ned imagines they were all too proud to debase themselves to go to the Sisters on purpose.

Ned remembers his own wedding was not such a happy affair. Lord Tully did his best as a host under the circumstances, but he and Cat were still strangers then, united only in a common grief, Brandon's ghost lying in the bed with them. Cat did her best to laugh and smile as his bannermen tore her dress off and made bawdy comments about her breasts, but he knew it wasn't right without Brandon there laughing alongside her, only with him blushing and staring at the ground. Their lovemaking – or heirmaking, rather – that night was as fumbling, awkward and short as you'd expect from two maids, and Ned can't imagine he brought her any pleasure.

Still, when he turns he sees three beautiful children he and Catelyn brought into the world – one upon that very night. _If Brandon lived they would not._ Ned flinches to think of it. He wonders, if some god or spirit came and offered his family back, that Father and Brandon and Lyanna would all rise from their graves – but if they did his children would have never been born... what would he say?

Ned shakes the thought away. That is impossible, no man will ever have to make such a choice – and a good thing too. What man could make such a choice?

Sansa does not seem as excited by the wedding as she was just previously. He tried asking her what's wrong, but she turned her head and muttered “Nothing,” sullenly. She and Jon are not so unalike as everyone would think, although Ned isn't planning on saying that to Catelyn.

He and Cat got better, in time. He and Cat learned to love each other, in time. Hopefully however, Amaeda and Ennett will not need it.

* * *

After the vows are made, the new Lord and Lady Longthorpe sit upon a makeshift dais as the guests are served hearty bowls of sister's stew. Hardly the most extravagant feast for a wedding, but Lord Rolland explains with a black grin, “it's just about the only thing my old teeth can handle.” Lord Borrell complains bitterly about the lack of spices, but Ned doesn't mind the plain taste of fish. Robb eats a full three bowls, as you might expect from a boy his age.

Sansa goes to dance, and Bran is busy playing some strange game involving a piece of string with Averick, a game they seem to have only just invented. The two boys have quickly become fast friends, which makes Tristen smile to see it. Ned spends most of those few hours speaking idly with Tristen. “It's a shame Howland did not make it,” muses Tristen at one point. “I wrote and invited him, but he didn't reply. Or maybe Amaeda cancelled my invitation.” Ned frowns, about to ask what he means by that, but then Tristen continues: “Still, I know how difficult it is to make it out of Greywater Watch. I mean it's hard enough to get in there.”

Ned blinks. “Do you visit there often?”

Tristen nods. “Aye. I've never thought it wise that the Crannogmen are so isolated, when the North relies on them so much for our defense. So I make it a point to visit Howland every couple of years or so – no matter how much strife it gets me in. I remember once when the twins were young I had a fall in the swamps and was stuck there for three months. Lydia wasn't too pleased with me when I got back.”

He says 'the twins' and his wife's name without flinching – perhaps the spectre of death is subsumed under the joy of a wedding, and the promise of new life it brings. _May your daughter give you many grandchildren, and help you heal your heart._

* * *

As the night wears on, it's somehow decided – Ned can't say by who, seemingly by everyone all at once – that it's time for the bedding. “Finally,” says Lady Amaeda as she's ushered to her feet, removing her husband's cloak as eagerly as her father's. “I thought you lot meant me to be a maid all night.”

Sansa, now returned to her seat, blushes deeply as the men start to strip the bride's dress. One man gets carried away and tugs so hard that the whole front of the gown comes off, revealing Amaeda's bosom to the whole room. Ned finds himself blushing to echo his daughter, but Amaeda just laughs. “Careful, my lord,” she grins. “I think my lord husband would be most disappointed if I went to his bed without teats.”

Lord Ennett mostly looks as if he's repressing the urge to punch the man's jaw. “She's so uncouth,” mutters Sansa, and Ned frowns, almost about to speak up for Lady Amaeda – he knows she's just making the jests all women make during the bedding ceremony, so it appears they're comfortable with it. The way Catelyn told it to him, no woman wants to appear scared of it, and every woman is.

“She is eager that one, huh?” comments Lord Borrell as the bride and groom are shepharded out of the room. “Think Rolland's little prince might get a surprise or two from his new princess.”

“Her mother was a Crakehall, what do you expect?” answers someone else, one of the Riverlords.

“I thought it was that ancestor of hers,” chimes in Lord Torrent. “You know, the one who ran away with – the wildling or ironborn or whoever he was. Probably an ironborn. They say they have a good nose for sluts. Only way they can get mainland women to be their saltwives.”

_They say the ironborn kidnap maids to make slaves of them and rape them every day._ 'Saltwife' was simply one of the many artful euphemisms the Ironborn used to pretend their barbarism was somehow noble, pure, holy. Ned did his best to educate his ward out of such ideas, but he wasn't sure how successful he was – and when he was unsure, Lyanna would haunt him. Still, Theon might be a whoremonger, but to the best of Ned's knowledge, he always pays his whores.

While this conversation is going on, Robb, blushing fiercely, remains staring into his fourth bowl of stew. Bran, also averting his eyes, but seemingly not with embarrassment – probably because Sansa has told him it's the proper thing to do – frowns in puzzlement, and leans in close to his brother. “Are you not going to join in?” he asks. “I mean, you're almost a man grown. Aren't you allowed?”

Robb blushes even deeper, and doesn't look up. “I am, but – I don't think I will.” He doesn't give an explanation. Ned smiles slightly as he assumes Robb is just afraid of embarrassing himself, like boys at that age are. He was very much the same at the first bedding he attended, although he can't for life of remember him who's bedding it was – much to Robert's consternation. _Come on, Ned, I know you're no invert! We have to go see our first pair of tits together!_ Of course, he was no less shy when he returned to Winterfell, and Brandon was no less bemused.

“I heard he was a Crannogman,” says one of the other riverlords, and across the table, Averick smirks.

“I'll tell Amaeda that,” he says. “She hates Crannogmen.”

_Why?_ Ned almost asks, but before he can Lord Borrell, clearly thoroughly in his cups, speaks again. “The point is, she has slut on both sides of the family. So we shouldn't be surprised.”

_Gods, I pity this man's poor daughters._ Lord Torrent, sitting next to him to keep Lord Sunderland at bay (“Rolland owes me,” Ned heard him muttering as he took his seat), raises an eyebrow. “I hope you don't mean offense to our noble guest's daughter, my lord.”

_What?!_ Sansa looks up, startled and blushing even deeper to have been suddenly dragged into this. Robb looks up also, his flush of embarrassment immediately replaced with one of anger. Ned feels just the same. “Excuse me,” he growls slowly, a warning to them both, “but what does this have to do with my daughter?”

Lord Borrell simply turns to Lord Torrent and laughs, while Lord Torrent, a man so small he could be a Crannogman himself, seems apologetic. “Forgive me, my lord. I meant your sweet child no dishonour.” _Good,_ thinks Ned. Poor Sansa hasn't even bled yet. She has a few years left before every man she meets will try and impinge upon her virtue. “It's only – isn't that how the story goes, that she was a Stark of Winterfell, a princess in those days, who ran away with – well, someone?”

“I heard she was an Umber,” comes a second voice immediately.

“I heard she was a Bolton.”

“I heard she was an Other.”

“I heard she was a Royce.”

Ned quickly gathers that they have all heard something different. He himself has heard half a dozen different versions over the years, more than one of them from Tristen, and it leads him to suspect no-one actually knows. Chances are, she didn't exist at all.

But then comes another voice, one so quiet Ned barely hears it. “I heard she was a Greystark,” says Roose Bolton as Ned turns to face him. “That's what Tristen told me.”

A Greystark. That makes a certain amount of sense – it explains why the Bluebell is where it is; the lady and her lover did not actually travel far from White Harbor – or the wolf's den, as it was back then. But then who was her lover? A Crannogman? A sisterman? A man of a mountain clan?

“In that case, you can say she made quite the fortuitous decision,” Lord Bolton carries on.

Indeed. Ned remembers when he was very young, before he even left for the Vale, and he first learned of the Greystarks – traitors who turned against their own kin and tried to usurp the crown, and were rightly crushed for it. Ned, even at that age aware of duty and honour, frowned. _But isn't that kinslaying?_ he asked, and Maester Walys shook his head. He said that enough time had passed that the Starks and Greystarks barely shared blood anymore at the time the former wiped the latter out, and that only made Ned frown deeper. _But how could they have turned against their kin then?_ he almost asked, but then Lyanna, no older than six, slapped his arm and told him he was stopping her hearing about the exciting bit, with blood and fighting.

“Perhaps,” Ned says uncomfortably, and Lord Bolton, bright blue eyes as unreadable as ever, twitches his jaw in a manner almost like a smile.

The conversation moves on from there.

* * *

About half an hour later, men are starting to funnel out of the hall, the crux of the wedding over and the sister's stew almost gone, ready to go to bed. Ned can see Bran yawning over the table and thinks he ought to put his children to bed soon, before he has to carry them.

Just as he's about to shake young Bran's shoulder, however, a sudden hush comes over the room. “What the bloody hell...?” mutters Lord Borrell.

Ned frowns and looks up to see what everyone's staring at. And he sees it. Her. In the doors stands Lady Amaeda Longthorpe, as naked as the day she was born, covered in a sheen of sweat. By his side Sansa turns bright red again, Robb hurriedly averts his eyes, and Bran pokes his head up. Ned turns to look at Lord Longthorpe and Lord Sunderland, wondering if this is just some strange Sisters tradition he doesn't know of, but they seem as bewildered as anyone. Seeing a bride naked during the bedding ceremony is normal, but seeing her afterward is obscene. Amaeda should be in Ennett's chambers, learning to sleep with him as husband and wife. What is she doing here?

As she draws closer Ned can see the streak of white running down her thigh – but not, he notices, a streak of red. For the most part she just ignores all the stares she gets, moving with an eerie grace. She only looks at three people: Ned, for a brief moment. Her father, for a much longer moment. And then, for barely a fraction of a second, Sansa – but that's enough to just break through her composure, to make her flinch.

Still, Amaeda doesn't stop when she reaches them, instead walking past to climb the steps to the dais, standing behind the feast table, not sitting to cover herself. The food is all but gone, but there remains a pitcher of wine. “My lord and ladies!” she calls, and a rumble spreads through the hall, as if a spell has just broken. _Whore!_ cries half the room. _Mad!_ cries the other. Amaeda pays neither any heed. “I know you are all gathered here today to celebrate the taking of my maidenhead,” she says. “And I so I thought, you and I should all make a toast to the man who took it.”

She tries to pour a glass of wine, but the pitcher slips through her sweaty fingers and falls to the ground, leaving a mess of broken glass and blood red wine. _She'll cut her feet._ Amaeda simply shrugs, and raises an empty glass instead.

“To my beloved father, Tristen Skyer, Lord of the Bluebell. A toast!”

 


	5. Among

Bran really doesn't know what's going on.

To be fair, it doesn't look much like anyone else does either. They're all just sitting there, in a state of shock, staring at a naked woman. Bran has a feeling like he shouldn't be staring at the naked woman, that's what Sansa says, but everyone else is including Sansa, so he can probably get away with it. Only one person will not look at her – Averic, sitting by Bran's side, averting his eyes and balling a fist beneath the table. Bran attempts to catch his eye, but fails.

Father is the first to say anything. “My lady... you should cover yourself,” he says, and he walks up to her at the dais, quickly wrapping his cloak around her. She looks puzzled, but takes it. “Thank you, my lord,” she says politely – Bran has to strain to hear her now, she's not talking to the whole room anymore. “But they all just tore my dress from me, I don't think my naked body will do them any harm.” She pauses. “Is this really what you're most worried about?”

He pauses before he answers, and then Bran can't hear him, because all the men around him are starting to speak. “Don't be silly!” calls someone. “Can't deflower a bluebell!”

People laugh. _A joke. Is that what's going on, is it all a joke?_ But Father doesn't look amused, nor does Averick, nor does Lady Amaeda. Her eyes dart around in a panic, as if something's just gone horribly wrong. And least amused of all is Lord Tristen, sitting there between his son and Bran's sister, as white as snow. Lord Sunderland laughs and claps his shoulder. “Let me guess, you didn't buy her a pony?” he asks. “Don't worry, mine are just the same. You should have heard the things Jon called me when I didn't have the coin for his new armour last year.”

Tristen smiles weakly, and Bran understands even less now. Up on the dais, Father is speaking: “My lady, the accusation you just made – if we could discuss this somewhere else–”

But then they're all interrupted by the sound of the doors swinging open again. Bran turns his head and there, dressed only in a loose nightshirt – but at least dressed – stands Lord Ennett, looking as confused as Bran feels. “Amaeda?”

She's quick to step away from his father and descend back down the steps, keeping the cloak wrapped tightly around her. “Forgive me, my lord, I didn't mean to leave you all alone.” She soon embraces him, pushes her body against his, and the crowd all chuckle as he freezes. “I was just so thrilled with your cock when I found it, I had to go announce my discovery to the whole world.” And then she kisses him, and Bran blushes and looks away again. Why do they have to keep kissing?

Once the kiss is over, Ennett is panting and out of breath, and some of the men around the couple are clapping. “Well,” he says, “back to bed then?”

Lady Amaeda seems to hesitate a moment, but then she grins. “To bed.” As she walks off with him though, she turns her head and looks once more at Father, who just stands there, lost.

_Is that it? Is it over now?_ Once they're gone everyone else seems to return to normal, laughing and chatting like nothing ever happened. But Father doesn't. He stands there, frozen, and that tells Bran this won't be over for a long time.

He looks again at Averick, who finally meets his eye. “I can't believe her,” he says. Bran blinks, waiting for further explanation, but he doesn't get any.

* * *

Ned's back hurts.

That's a very strange thing to be worried about at the moment, but it does. He's getting old and he should be in bed by now; his body aches in strange ways to nag him when he doesn't go to bed soon enough. Still, he knows he cannot sleep now.

Slowly, he steps down from the dais. He stares across the hall and finds everyone merrily chatting away, drinking and feasting, Tristen talking to Robb about something. It's enough to make Ned wonder if he imagined the whole thing, if he's going mad. _Did none of you hear her?_

Then, there is a man by his side. “Lord Stark!” he says, putting a familiar arm around him. “Listen, don't worry about her, right? Lord Tristen seems a nice man. You know the things girls like that say.”

Ned blinks, extracting himself from the embrace – this man is tall, dark-haired and somewhat thin, and Ned doesn't recognise him at all. “Excuse me, my lord,” he says, “have we met?”

“Hmm? Oh, no,” and the man steps away, extending a hand politely. “Forgive me, my lord. I am Ser Jeremy Nayland.”

He thinks he has heard the name Nayland before, but he has no idea where from. _Cat would know_ , he thinks. “I see,” he says quietly. “And do you know Lady Amaeda?”

Ser Jeremy looks uncomfortable and rubs the back of his neck. “Well, not the girl herself,” he says, “but I know a cousin of hers, one of my liege's granddaughters. Married off young, beneath her standing. Crakehalls, you know what they're like.”

Oh course, Ned's heard what the Crakehalls are like. Everyone's heard what the Crakehalls are like. _So who'd ever believe a Crakehall girl who said she was raped?_

“I see,” says Ned, a scowl etched upon his face. “And why are you telling me this?”

Ser Jeremy looks over his shoulder, back at Tristen, before turning back to Ned. “Well he's your bannerman, isn't he?”

Dread settles in Ned's guts. _Indeed he is._

* * *

“Sansa.”

She's grateful to have Bran pulling on her hand demanding attention, for it drags her away from her own thoughts. It was terrible, watching Lady Amaeda – hearing Lady Amaeda... Sansa thought she was awful, and is still quite cross about the things that woman said, but even she couldn't help but notice the fear in her eyes as she spoke, no matter how she tried to hide it. _She must be mad,_ Sansa thinks. _Can't be true, can it? No, Lord Tristen is Father's friend. Father wouldn't be friends with such a man._

She smiles down at her little brother, who looks at her incredibly anxious. “What is it, Bran?” She hopes he and Averick are just playing some little boy's game and need someone to judge an uncertain move.

Bran drops his voice to a whisper. “Lady Amaeda,” he says, “what did she just say? I mean, I heard what she said but – what did she mean?”

Sansa's jaw drops open. _No. No, I don't want to speak of this._ “It's – it's not really something little boys need to know about,” she tells him. She isn't that much older than Bran, not even four years, but that's not the point.

“But everyone else knows,” he tells her. “I'm confused.”

Sansa sends a pleading look over her shoulder to Robb, who catches her eye and winces, but then sighs in resignation. It will be easier for him to explain than her. _It's not something he has to worry about._

Robb sighs and gently takes Bran's other hand. “Bran, you know our aunt Lyanna?”

Bran nods. Of course, none of them ever knew their aunt Lyanna – she died before they were born. _And if she hadn't been kidnapped, raped and murdered, we might never have been born._ The thought makes Sansa shudder. “You know how Prince Rhaegar hurt her?” Bran nods again, but of course he doesn't. No-one has ever told Bran what rape is. He will have to see a man die before anyone will think to teach him that.

Sansa learned what it was when she was nine, on the one and only occasion Arya managed to talk her into coming to watch her spar with the stablehands. Nothing happened, but when they got back Septa Mordane was so incensed she slapped Sansa across the face, terrified and furious. _You damn fool girl! I expect this from your sister, but you? Do you have any idea what those boys would do to you if you gave them half a chance?!_

But when Sansa burst into tears, her Septa softened, guilty. _Oh, I'm sorry sweetling,_ she said and folded Sansa into her arms, and Sansa leaned into the embrace. _But you must be careful, alright?_ And then she explained, and Sansa gawped in horror. Ever since that day she's always been very careful about the men of her father's household, lest they get the wrong idea. Arya, of course, has not learned.

Robb sighs. “Lady Amaeda... seems to have claimed her father hurt her the same way.”

Bran blinks in confusion. “But she's not dead.”

“No, no, not like that,” Sansa finds herself bursting in, “but he – she said he took her maidenhead. That's what Rhaegar did to our aunt.”

A pause. Then, Bran's eyes go wide with horror. “But–” he says, “–didn't Father take Mother's maidenhead?”

“No no no Bran, that's different,” Sansa insists. She's saying this all wrong. “He's her husband, he was meant to that. She wanted him to.” _Or at least, she agreed to let him._ In truth she doesn't really know how her mother felt upon her wedding night, but she knows that she and Father love each other a lot, and she has, on a couple of occasions when too excited to show her mother a new tapestry or somesuch she's just completed, burst into her mother's chambers to see things she would really rather not. Horribly embarrassing, but also reassuring.

“Father would never hurt Mother, you know that,” Robb reassures Bran, and perhaps himself. After all, Sansa thinks, it was him who was brought into the world on their first night together. “But it's because she didn't want him to, you see, and he did it anyway. He forced her. That's the crime Rhaegar committed... and that's what Lady Amaeda has accused her father of.”

“ _Oh_.” And Sansa sighs in relief. Finally, they explained it. “So... did he do it?”

Sansa's mouth hangs open. _No, of course not. A father wouldn't do that to his daughter. A lord wouldn't do that to a lady._ But the words catch in her throat.

Robb just sighs. “I don't know.”

* * *

He can't avoid Tristen forever, Ned knows that. Eventually, he must return to his seat, and meet the man's gaze. To his credit, Tristen doesn't try at all to avoid the subject. “Ned, you know it's not true, right?”

Ned hesitates. _Of course,_ he wants to say, but the words catch in his throat. Tristen is his friend, and Ned doesn't want to believe this of him. Tristen is Howland's friend, and Ned has always thought Howland a good judge of character, better than him. Tristen is Lord of the Bluefields, and his commonfolk will suffer if he is accosted for this crime. Tristen's heir is young and fragile, and cannot possibly be ready to take over if his lord father loses his liberty, or his life. Tristen is a good man, everyone says so, keeping a son many men would have shut away in shame proudly by his side, how could he possibly be the same sort of man to rape his own daughter?

And yet. Ned remembers another man, one everyone said was so good, so noble. One who would have been a great king. And Ned remembers how he stole a woman from her bed and raped his bastard into her, then left her to die in a pool of his own blood.

(At least, he thinks that's what happened.)

“Do you have any idea why she'd accuse you of this?” he asks, and Tristen sighs sadly.

“No, I haven't a clue,” he says. He pauses. “I suppose... maybe I was never as close to her as her brothers, maybe I left to much of my daughter's upbringing to my wife. But still, she's _my_ daughter. How could she say such a thing?”

Ned has no idea. If it isn't true, why would Amaeda say such a thing? _She's just afraid her new husband will notice she didn't bring a maidenhead with her, and is making out like she was forced for his sympathy,_ he heard Lord Borrell muttering before, but that makes no sense. That would be reason enough to accuse one of her lord father's squires or guards of raping her, but Lord Tristen himself? Why bring the scandal of incest upon the whole family? If it isn't true – which it well might be – what could Tristen have possibly done to make his daughter hate him that much?

_If she had accused a squire or guard, I would have already had the man's head._ That thought makes Ned flinch

Ned realises he has no idea what to do. But Ser Jeremy was right about one thing, Tristen is his bannerman, so he must do something. _I was not meant for this,_ he thinks, which is the sort of thing he knows he should not let himself think, but he does it anyway. _Brandon always knew what to do. It was all meant for Brandon. I never asked for this cup to pass to me._

And then out of the corner of his eye he spots a woman at the back of the room, almost out of sight, barely poking her head out of the kitchens. _Of course, the servants will be gossiping about this all night._ Then Ned recognises her – that cook Robb met, what was her name, Pia? And she's staring. At Tristen, and at him.

_What are you doing?_ he almost wants to ask her, but she scurries away long before he can.

* * *

Bran is only slightly less confused now. He knows Robb and Sansa did their best to explain, so maybe he should ask Father, but Father seems busy, speaking to Lord Tristen in a hushed voice with a stern frown. Would Father be speaking to him if it was true? Or is he interrogating the man, trying to find out if it's true? Is he as confused as Bran is?

Everyone else seems to have returned to party, as if they'd rather forget the whole sorry business – even Robb and Sansa have gone to dance again. But Bran can't, and Averick clearly can't either, sitting miserably in his chair staring into an empty bowl. Bran grins at him, trying to cheer him up. “Hey, I found some spare fishing nets under the dais,” he whispers. “You want to go steal them and put them in my brother and sister's beds?” He opts against mentioning Averick's own sister.

Averick shrugs. “Fine,” he mutters, and Bran frowns. He doesn't sound very enthusiastic.

“Are you alright?”

“You know it's not true, right?” Averick looks up at him, wide-eyed. “It can't be true, I know it. My father's a good man, he loves me, he wouldn't do those things. It's her, she's always been the problem, she's always hated me, she's always hated him–”

“Hey, hey, calm down!” Bran says, taken aback. _Of course it's not true,_ he wants to say, if only to stop Averick from crying which he looks like he's about to do any second – but he has no idea whether it's true or not. He doesn't know any of these people, really. He has no real reason to believe Amaeda over Tristen, or Tristen over Amaeda. He believes Averick, he doesn't think his new friend would lie to him, but does he think that Averick knows the truth? “Listen – don't worry, my father will sort it out. That's his job.”

Averick simply sniffs, all but ignoring him. “She's always hated me. She'd never say as much aloud, but I know she does. And she hates him for having me. She thinks it's our fault she had to marry a sisterman.” And Bran blinks, wondering where that came from. “No-one better wants her, you see, because they all think she'll have babes like me.”

_Oh._ Then Bran frowns in confusion again. Something about that just seems... off. _Are you sure?_ he wants to ask, but it doesn't seem very nice.

“I wish Aleas were here,” Averick sighs sadly. “She wouldn't say it if he was. For his sake. He was the only one of us she ever loved.”

Bran has no idea what to say to that, so he simply lays a hand on his friend's shoulder.

 


	6. Between

Things quieten down for awhile after that, everyone wishing merely to get on with the party, except for those who come up to whisper in Ned's ear, _she can't be telling the truth because this,_ or _she must be telling the truth because that_ – although none of them are so brave as to actually tell him what to do. Everyone seems to have agreed it is his responsibility, but eventually they leave him alone long enough Ned thinks it safe to risk fetching another glass of wine.

Of course, as soon as he does, he finds himself staring into the sea-like eyes of Lady Amaeda.

“My lady,” he says awkwardly. She is sitting in the shadows, near the kitchens and the cheaper wine, where no-one – not least her lord father – will see her. _How long has she been here?_ Ned wonders. _Well at least she's dressed now_ , she's wrapped in one of her lord husband's nightshirts and a cloak, and she seems not to be trying to cause such a fuss. _Does she just want to see how we're reacting_. “I thought you were with your husband,” he says.

She nods. “In a moment,” she says. “I simply forgot something in my toast, that's all,” and she raises another glass of wine, full this time. Ned's stomach drops. “To the man who murdered my brother.”

Ned blinks. _What, weren't rape and incest enough to accuse him of?_

Before he gets the chance to ask what she means by that, they're both distracted by a lot of banging and shouting. “Amaeda?!” Ned realises, even if Amaeda isn't making a commotion now, that doesn't mean her husband won't. The doors swing open and he storms in, seeming angered now. “Amy, what the fuck are you – _where_ the fuck are you?”

“Over here, my love!” She stands, and the servants near here all look stunned to realise they had the Lady Amaeda in their midst all along. Ennett lets out a sigh of relief, but his anger doesn't seem all dissipated.

“There you are. You disappeared on me again, I was worried. Gods be good Amy, what are you doing?”

Amaeda hesitates, struggling for an answer that will make any sense – she's told him none of this, Ned can tell. She's afraid of what he'll think. Before she can speak however, someone else interjects:

“Just what we're trying to figure out!” It's one of the sistermen, one of Lord Rolland's bannermen mayhaps – does Lord Rolland have bannermen? “Opinion's divided. Either she's trying to ruin her father's life for no good reason, or a perfectly good reason. Or she's just trying to come up with a convincing excuse for why she's not a maid. If you can tell which, by all means share.”

Lord Ennett stares a moment before he turns back to Amaeda, and she blanches white. Ned's not sure how she would have told him, but he's fairly sure it wouldn't have been like that. Ennett's eyes narrow. “Is this true?” he asks.

Amaeda sighs, and nods. “Yes. I'm sorry.” Ennett lets out an angry hiss, and Ned watches Amaeda's breathing quicken, as if she's frightened. “I'm sorry, I meant to tell you but – I was scared you'd–”

“I should have known,” Ennett mutters as he turns from her, rubbing his brow. “When you told me I shouldn't be surprised if you didn't bleed. I should have known you were making excuses–”

Amaeda looks wounded. “That is true, actually. I read it in one of my books on medicine,” she says. “If a man is gentle, there's no reason a maid should have to bleed her first time – no more than her maidenhead must be in tact, and not broken from horse-riding.” But Ennett still isn't looking at her, so Amaeda, nothing if not courageous, slowly approaches him, laying a delicate hand on his arm. She smiles. “Come now. Don't you remember how I love to read?”

From the way he jumps away from her, you'd think she just asked if he remembers how she loves to eat babies whole. “I don't know you,” he snarls, finally looking at her face again. “I don't know anything about you.”

Tears well up in her eyes. “Ennett, I didn't _want_ it!” she insists, and Ned has the sneaking suspicion that, unlike everyone else in this room – who don't know whether they should believe her – Ennett simply doesn't care. “That's why I did all this, that's why I told the world, I wanted–”

He slaps her, hard. Amaeda goes reeling and Ned has to rush to her side to catch her before she falls on the ground. He stares up at Lord Ennett in stunned fury.

“To humiliate me, is that what you wanted? In front of all my people?” And Amaeda stares at him like she doesn't understand a word he's saying. Ned doesn't blame her. _How can you do this to your wife?_ “So what, did daddy take your maidenhead so now you want to punish him for ruining you? For making you settle for a stupid web-fingered sisterman?”

Amaeda blinks. “Is that what you think?” she asks, and then she turns her head, as if she's trying to hide her tears. _Or is she trying to show them to me?_ “I love you.” A pause, then she sniffs and looks up to meet his eye, defiant once more. “And regardless of what you think of me, I am your wife and I demand to be treated–”

“You are not my wife,” says Ennett. “You are some whore, and I want nothing to do with you.”

Then he looks away from her and starts searching the crowd for someone – and quickly finds him. “Father!”

Lord Rolland looks surprised. “What am I meant to do about this, exactly?”

“She _lied_ to me,” says Ennett, whining like a spoiled child. “Surely this means – the marriage can't be valid, can it?”

Rolland scoffs. “Not how it works, son. You said the words and stuck your prick in her, so you're stuck with her. What, do you think you're the first man to marry a girl who said she was a maid and wasn't?”

“I thought–” but then he looks back at Amaeda, crouched on the ground, looking up at him hopefully. He lets out one more angry breath, and then walks away without another word. Ned watches Amaeda's face crumble and pulls her against his chest, like he would Sansa if she was crying, forgetting a moment that Amaeda might have lied about everything. _He thought she was his storybook princess,_ he thinks, _and if she's not, then she's nothing to him._

Amaeda only waits a few seconds however before she rights herself once more, pulling out of Ned's embrace. “Excuse me, my lord,” she says. “I ought to be with my husband.”

“Lady Amaeda–”

But then she's gone again.

* * *

“See, what did I tell you?” says Lord Borrell. “Afraid of how her husband would react if he realised she wasn't a maid, so she made up an excuse. Turns out, she was quite right to be afraid.” _But he wouldn't have realised if she didn't say anything,_ Sansa almost says, but she bites her tongue. “See, if it was true, she wouldn't have waited half her life until some man had safely stolen her away to speak up. She'd have said it as soon as he touched her.”

“That's stupid!” Sansa blurts out, and everyone turns to look at her. _Oh no._ She blushes in embarrassment, but she knows she can't back down now. “I mean... look how Lord Ennett reacted. How could she know that any man she wanted to marry wouldn't react like that? How could she know that if she told anyone what her father did to her, anyone would marry her, and she wouldn't be stuck with him forever?”

Murmuring breaks out across the table, seemingly concluding that she has a point. Lord Borrell looks less than convinced, but he says nothing to her. She feels her hand squeezed, and then turns to see Robb looking at her with a worried frown. “Sorry,” she says, “did I embarrass you?”

“No, no, of course not,” he says, but still, he looks troubled. “I just... I didn't think of that.”

_No, you wouldn't have,_ Sansa almost says. But she holds her tongue and squeezes his hand in return.

* * *

When Ned next runs into Tristen, he sees a deep flush on his cheeks and a glass of wine in his hand. “You're drunk,” Ned says, pointlessly.

Tristen laughs bitterly. “Can you blame me?” No, Ned supposes not. Tristen sighs deeply. “Well, at least her husband realised what she's like sooner than her father did. Though not soon enough, it seems.”

Ned flinches. “Tristen.” Because despite what Amaeda's said, and how righteously angry Tristen must be if he's the one who's telling the truth, it still hurts to hear a man, any man, speak that way of his daughter.

“What? The girl goes and tells the whole world I raped her, and I'm supposed to pretend like that's fine?”

“No, but–” Ned doesn't know what. He wishes this wasn't happening. He wishes he didn't have to deal with this happening. “Look... you saw how Lord Longthorpe reacted. You know she's just destroyed her marriage by saying what she did.” Ned pauses, afraid Tristen might chime in with a bitter _good_ , but he says nothing. “If she's lying – why would she put herself through that?”

“...I have no idea,” Lord Tristen concedes. “Perhaps they planned that together, to make you feel sorry for her.” Perhaps – but why would Lord Ennett consent to that, to have his wife tell the whole world another man had her maidenhead? Has she promised him something in return? Or does he love her that much? Tristen looks up at him. “You don't believe me, do you?”

Ned hesitates. “I don't know what to believe,” he admits, and he expects Tristen to get angry with him, after all the years they've been friends, after how loyal and brave he was in the war – but instead the man just nods sadly. “I just... if it's not true, what could possibly make her do all this? And if she's not a maid, and you didn't take her, then who did?”

A pause, and then Tristen sighs again. “It was my fault,” he mutters. Ned blinks.

“What?”

Tristen sighs and puts down his wine, turning to lean against the bench. “Amaeda bled young, you see. Only about her eleventh nameday,” he says, and Ned nods along. “And I... didn't want to deal with it. I wanted to pretend she was still my little girl. And, in truth, I might have left too much of her upbringing to Lydia – letting the mother raise the daughter, you know.” He sighs. “And... I don't know. Something wrong got into her. Probably those books of hers. And she became obsessed with me.”

“Obsessed.”

“She _wanted me_ , Ned.” And Ned frowns. If he's lying, he might have quite a high opinion of himself. “I tried to ignore it, I tried to act like it was just a girl wanting her father's love – I was so relieved when she agreed to wed Lord Longthorpe.” And he laughs. “Still, at the back of my mind I was always afraid, like if I didn't give in to what she wanted, she'd find a way to punish me. She could have been a Lannister that girl; she pays her debts. And after Lydia...”

Ned blinks, waiting for him to continue, but he doesn't. So Ned prompts him. “After Lydia...?”

“Nothing,” Tristen shakes his head, and then looks up to across the room to the tables, where Bran and Averick sit side by side. “My son needs me.”

And Ned is left alone again, with more questions than answers.

Not least because Lord Skyer didn't even try answer his second one.

* * *

A little later he runs into Lord Bolton again, who coolly examines the glass of wine in his hand. “Lord Stark,” he says. “I hope you are not taking leave of your senses.”

Ned grits his teeth together. “No,” he says. _Of course not,_ he wants to snap, remembering the way Robert could drink when he wanted to and how it was always him who had to get him into bed without Lord Arryn seeing them, but he knows he's just being petty.

“Good. I think you ought to keep your wits about you.” And Lord Bolton casts a look over his shoulder, searching out Tristen in the crowd. “After all, he's your bannerman. Surely it's your responsibility?”

Ned considers throwing his wine in Bolton's face, just to wipe that look of ice-like smugness away, but he reminds himself that he is a man grown, he is the Warden of the North, and he cannot throw tantrums. _If you want to be Warden of the North so much, how would you deal with this?_ he wants to spit, but he knows the question wouldn't mean the same thing to Bolton as it does to him: the man cares nothing for justice, only order, and he would probably have Amaeda's head simply for causing such a fuss. He would not struggle with this.

“Tell me, Lord Bolton,” says Ned, taking a sip of his wine, “what do you think is going on? Who do you believe?”

Bolton ponders this a moment. “I am not sure, in truth. There is no reason for me to know. I haven't seen Lord Skyer in some time. Chances are, neither of them has been entirely honest.” Ned blinks. That's a good point. _Because things weren't complicated enough already?_ “And I'm not sure it makes any difference.”

Lord Bolton can clearly see the bewilderment written on Ned's face, and his mouth twitches in something that could, for him, almost be a smile. “Say Lord Skyer did take his daughter's maidenhead. A terrible sin. And a very foolish thing to do – he's ruined her value in marriage,” he says, looking over his shoulder at something – probably looking for Lord Ennett, but Ned can't see him. “But not necessarily a crime.”

_What?!_ Ned wants to shout, but he finds himself to stunned to speak. He just stares slack-jawed, and Lord Bolton continues.

“After all, he is not some hedge knight, some wandering minstrel, some smith's apprentice – he is her lord father. If a man can choose who his daughter should lose her maidenhead to, who says he cannot say she should lose it to him?” Ned feels sick. _That is marriage, that's different,_ but then he remembers Lyanna, and he wonders if she would agree. He wonders if Arya would. “If a man took her by force, then the crime is against him, not her. And a man can't commit such a crime against himself.”

_No_ , he wants to shout – though he knows in the eyes of the law it may well be true: the cases of rape brought before him are always brought by girl's father's who want some boy gelded for what defiling their property. Never by the girls themselves. _So what, any girl is fair game to her father if he wishes? Like common girls were to their lords before King Jaehaerys?_ No, Ned cannot think that. That is not justice. Rape is rape, and any woman who suffers it deserves retribution – even against her own father. After all, what of honour? What of duty? What of _family_?

Perhaps that's what Ned struggles with the most in all this, the thought any man could do that to his own daughter. He thought unkindly of the men who've come to him with their cases before – but they've all always been very upset to see their daughters, the girls they love, so hurt. Ned shudders to think of what he would do if any man did something to either of his girls. He always thought the urge to protect one's children, but especially one's daughters, was universal, from the lowliest peasant to the king himself: he knows Fredrik, one of his guards, has bastard daughter from a whore somewhere, who the rest of the guards are well and truly sick of hearing about. Fred would tear the realm apart if something happened to her. Any man would.

But Lord Bolton is not like other men, Ned realises.

“You disgust me,” he spits before he can stop himself, and Bolton merely raises his eyebrows, barely even surprised. “I never want to hear these words from you again.”

And Bolton nods. “As you wish, my lord.”

As he walks away, Ned sighs and takes another sip of wine. Roose Bolton is a terrible man, Ned's always known he is a terrible man. But Ned knows something else now too: that he was Tristen's foster brother.

* * *

It's almost funny that, after nearly two hours have passed since Amaeda first made her statement, she and her father finally run into each other again purely accident. Ned blinks when he realises she is still here. _Did she say she ought to be with her husband?_ he thinks. _Why can't the girl ever stay still?_ He might have drunk more than he should, he realises, though he scowls to think Lord Bolton might have been right. He discards his glass, not wanting to damage his wits any further.

“Father,” says Amaeda as she looks up at him, and Ned doesn't hear a trace of fear in her voice. But perhaps she's simply putting on a brave face?

“Daughter,” Tristen says, and Amaeda flinches. Ned realises Lord Tristen is very drunk – his face is bright red and he's swaying slightly on his feet. Ned's hand goes to his hip automatically, afraid he will have to intervene before things come to violence. Though looking at the two of them, it would be decidedly one-sided violence.

Amaeda drops her eyes to the floor. “Excuse me, my lord,” she mutters as she tries to walk past, and Tristen doesn't stop her. He does, however, call after her.

“I figured it out, you know!” he says, and Amaeda turns back to him with a look equal parts puzzled and nervous. A hush falls over the room, all awaiting the next installment of this play. Tristen gives an ugly smile. “My own daughter wouldn't slander me so, would she?” Amaeda says nothing to that. “No, she must have made an honest mistaken. The man who took her maidenhead must simply have looked like me, so she got confused.” A pause. “Your brother took after me so much.”

“Don't you _dare_ ,” Amaeda spits upon the ground, face twisting in fury. She looks quite hideous. “If you say a word about Aleas, I'll–”

And Tristen simply laughs over her. “My lords and ladies!” he calls, getting what little attention wasn't on him before. “If we are making toasts, as my daughter wishes, then as the father of the bride, I would like to make my own. A toast! To my beautiful daughter, Lady Amaeda Longthorpe.” He raises his glass to her. “To the woman who murdered my wife!”

 


	7. Over

_Oh, of course,_ is the first think Ned thinks. _She slayed her own mother, or he slayed his own son. Or both, or neither. Has anyone in this house not committed a hideous crime?_

He almost wants to laugh, but he knows it would be both inconvenient and out of character, for him. Better not let the crowd think he's losing his mind. No-one else is laughing, all staring in tense silence as they await Lady Amaeda's answer. She tries keeping her withering glare on her father, as if nothing has happened, but then she falters and her eyes drop back down to the floor. “I never hurt Mother,” she mutters.

“Just as I never hurt you.”

She looks back up at him, blinking almost as if she doesn't understand. And then her face twists in anger again, and she lets out a bitter snort of laughter. “Well I'm sure if she was here, you'd have a firm seconder for that statement,” she says, and then it's Tristen's turn to blink in confusion. “Don't act like you care about Mother's death, Father. The day after she fell you were telling anyone who would listen how clumsy she was, how many times you had to stop her falling to her death, lest anyone think she might not have entered that well by accident.” She pauses. “And why should you care? After all, she was very good at not caring about things.”

Lord Tristen looks even more confused now, and Amaeda smiles a rotten, teary smile, a smile that could mean anything. “You didn't see her, did you?” she asks. “Well fair enough, she must have long outgrown your attentions. But I saw her. I saw her, and she saw me.” And she pauses again, flinching slightly, and taking deep breaths as if fighting back tears. “She saw me, on my back on the cold stone floor of your solar, crying with your hand over my mouth as you raped me. Twelve years old. And she decided to walk away.”

A ripple spreads through the crowd, and Ned sighs in resignation. _No, even the dead ones are monsters._ “If she decided she couldn't live with herself after that, if she threw herself down that well like Aleas, _good_.”

Tristen curses under his breath. “Amaeda...”

“I didn't kill her, but I wish I did!” And she laughs hysterically. “I wish I'd barricaded the doors and burnt your fucking Bluebell to the ground. I wish I'd killed the whole lot of us!”

* * *

“I have to stop her.”

Bran blinks and turns to Averick at his side, staring dead ahead with a look of utter fury. It's slightly frightening. “I'm sure my father will figure this out,” he insists, even though he's never seen Father look less like he's figured something out.

“She's going to ruin everything!” cries Averick, smashing his fist upon the table. Bran jumps. “I can't let her say these things about my father, I won't let her say these things about my father, he's the best thing I have – and I'm going to be Lord of the Bluebell one day, I can't let her slander our house–”

“Okay!” says Bran, interrupting Averick before he starts to foam at the mouth. “But what are you going to do then?”

There's a pause as Averick considers his options. “I could kill her.”

_What?!_ Bran's jaw drops open, he's so shocked. “No you can't!” he says, waving his arms about frantically, everything his mother and father and brothers and sisters and Maester Luwin have ever taught him about right and wrong coming back to him. “She's your _sister_!”

“But she wants to kill him!” says Averick, and Bran blinks. Where did that come from? “She doesn't want to do it herself, she wants to have your father do it, make it look like a just execution, but she'll kill him – not with a sword, with _lies_.” Realisation is slowly dawning on Bran, and he sees tears in Averick's eyes. He wants to reach out to his new friend, but when Averick sees how taken aback he is, he gives a withering glare that makes Bran recoil. “You didn't even think of that, did you?”

_No,_ thinks Bran, suddenly feeling very much like a stupid child. “My father wouldn't do that,” he insists, and Averick says nothing, he just looks away. Bran sighs, and he looks away to, over to where Lord Tristen and Lady Amaeda are still arguing – but now they speak in hushed whispers, so Bran can't hear them. “What about your mother?” he asks. “Do you think Amaeda – what your father said?”

Averick hesitates. “...I barely remember my mother. She died awhile ago, when I was little.” Bran is puzzled. Everyone kept talking like Lady Lydia's death happened just before Aleas', but then again, he's often thought adults think things happen closer together than they really do. It might have been all of three years ago or something. he admits. “But if he says so, I believe him.”

Bran frowns at that, but Averick carries on before he can question it. “I do remember a woman,” he says wistfully. “When I was little. No more than a babe. She would play with me, sing to me, hold me. She was so pretty, she looked so much like me, my hair and eyes. Sometimes she was so small she could barely carry me, but she wouldn't give up trying.” He pauses. “If Amaeda killed her...”

Bran nods along, but then his eyes flicker back over to Averick's father and sister. “I thought you took after your father?” he asks.

Averick thinks this over a moment, and sighs. “Alright, perhaps I don't remember her at all,” he says. “Perhaps that was a dream.”

“Perhaps,” says Bran, doubtfully. He feels sorry for Averick, but also, he is deeply confused. “What about your brother?” he asks. “I mean, what your father said he and Amaeda did.” And Bran doesn't actually understand what that is. Robb and Sansa explained the whole taking-maidenheads thing to him, but now Lord Tristen has complicated it all again, and Bran doesn't want to ask a second time and seem stupid. Mostly, he's getting the impression maidenheads are more trouble than they're worth. “Do you believe him about that?”

“No,” says Averick immediately, catching Bran off guard. “I believe she'd try, but Aleas... no, never. He was _good_.”

“Alright,” Bran is nodding along, feeling almost like he'll be able to get to the bottom of this mystery. “So if it's not true: why would your father say it?”

Averick spine stiffens at that, and he avoids Bran's eye. Bran soon realises, he doesn't know. He expects Averick to say as much eventually, but he doesn't – instead he simply grasps his cane, stands up, and walks away.

* * *

Ned needs to turn away.

He knows he shouldn't, that he should be dealing with this, he should be making sure neither Lord Skyer nor Lady Longthorpe really does kill each other, but he can't. His head hurts. Two murders and a rape – or the gods only know how many rapes, really – he has to solve now, and he can't. He doesn't know the truth of all this. He wasn't there. He doesn't know what proof there could possibly be. He could put them both on trial, but he suspects that would drag up no more evidence than everything the two of them have said tonight. In the south he thinks they often settle questions such as this one with a trial by combat, but Ned neither likes nor trusts trials by combat, especially not after what happened to Father, and Brandon.

What would he even be trying? Amaeda says her father raped her since she was a child, and her mother knew but would rather die than do anything about it, and then he killed Aleas because – why? Did the boy find out? And Tristen, he says his daughter tried to seduce him when she was a child, so she took her brother to bed – what, as a substitute? But then murdered her mother out of jealousy? Tristen did say Aleas and Lydia were close.

Ned remembers Lydia Skyer, barely. She was firm and stocky, as the Crakehalls tend to be, and tall for her age. Still, she was a shy, quiet sort of girl, who'd never dream of defying her lord husband, not even as he drunkenly brooded over what deserved to happen to her former liege lords for what they'd done to the Targaryen children. Ned thought that normal enough at the time, but what if it wasn't? Lady Lydia was so _young_ , she couldn't have been older than thirteen when she wed. Not that much older than Sansa. And Tristen was a man grown, at least twenty, probably a few years older, and Lord of the Bluebell since his grandfather passed with a sickness – his father died in the War of the Ninepenny Kings. He chose his own wife. Even if what Amaeda says is true, mayhaps Lydia Skyer was no monster. Mayhaps she was as much a victim as her daughter was.

But that doesn't seem right either. Nothing Ned thinks seems right, and he knows that's because none of it is right. Whatever happened, it never should have between a father and daughter. And yet, something must have.

He tries to imagine what such a trial would even look like, but then all he can see is Lyanna in the witness stall, crying as she tells the world what Prince Rhaegar did to her. And Ned knows no-one would ever believe her – with her dagger on her hip and boy's leathers and maidenhead long ruptured from horse-riding, and the fact that try as she might, she couldn't quite help but smile when Prince Rhaegar handed her that crown. The she-wolf, they used to call her. No-one has ever known a wolf to worry about her maidenhead. Ned feels ill.

He's so lost in his reverie he doesn't even notice when he walks straight into a serving girl. “Forgive me, m'lord!” she says, stumbling to stop the glasses of wine she's carrying spilling.

“No, it's my fault, I wasn't looking–” and when he helps her steady her tray, he stops. _Arya, what are you doing now?_ he almost asks. But no, it's not Arya, she's definitely older than Arya – although how much older Ned isn't quite sure, for the girl has an odd face that could be four and ten as easily as it could be four and twenty. And she has the mark on all finger fingers of her left hand, but none on her right. Still, the resemblance is striking: dark hair braided back, long face, and deep grey eyes. She looks Arya and Jon both. _Lyanna_ , Ned realises. _She looks like Lyanna._

Well if Brandon visited this castle, that makes a certain degree of sense. “If you say so, my lord,” she says, and sighs as she collects herself. “Well here I am. Would you like a glass of wine, my lord?”

“No, no thank you.” He's probably had too much already. He blinks at her, and then looks over his shoulder to see he's standing at quite a great distance from the Skyers. He didn't mean to go that far. He sighs. “I suppose I have to go back there.”

The serving girl hesitates. “Er, if m'lord says so, I won't–”

“No, no, it's fine. I shouldn't have asked. Sorry.” He doesn't want to push this girl into saying something she might regret. He tries to be reasonable with his own servants, but he has no idea what Lord Longthorpe is like, and he knows it's not his place to interfere. He sighs. “It's just... I have a duty, it seems.”

“It seems,” mutters the girl. “Look, Lord Stark, I may be breaking ranks if I say this but – I've met northmen before, sailors from White Harbor and the like. I'm sure you'll do the right thing. They always say how good and just the Starks of Winterfell are.” She pauses. “Though my mother–”

The girl doesn't finish that sentence, and Ned blinks. He's so overwhelmed it's taking him longer than it should to put things together, but: she looks like one of them. She could be Brandon's. If so, then he must find this mother of hers – it wouldn't surprise him at all to learn Brandon had got a bastard on some poor woman and then forgotten all about her, but Ned is not such a man. If the girl is his niece, he can't abandon her. _Now I must deal with this too._

“Your mother – is she–?”

But then the girl's attention is called by some incomprehensible squawk over Ned's shoulder, and she jumps. “Excuse me, m'lord,” she says, “but I must get back to work.”

“Oh... of course,” he says as she scurries off. Right, she has a duty. As he has his own.

* * *

Tristen and Amaeda are still arguing when he returns. “You're mad, girl. Mad, and jealous, and wrong. I tried to tell myself you weren't, tried to think I couldn't give birth to such a thing, but I know better now. Is that why you killed your mother? Could you not bear to share? Is that why you've always hated Averick? You ruined her, and you ruined Aleas, and I will not let you ruin me.”

“Everything I am, you made me, Father,” Amaeda tells him. “I didn't ruin your precious family, you did that yourself. I'm just the only one who knows the truth: you are a man without honour. Aleas would be ashamed of you.”

“How dare you–”

“Enough!” Ned burst out, and the two of them both jump as they turn to look at him. They must not have realised he'd come back. He stares at them both, and sighs deeply. “It seems I have no choice but to bring you both to trial. If you both accuse each other of murder...”

“Murder?!” Tristen says, bewildered, and Amaeda lets out her own sigh.

“No, my lord, you cannot try him for that,” she says. “Rape, but not murder.”

Ned blinks in confusion. “You said he killed your brother.”

“She said I did _what_?!” says Lord Skyer. “I – he was my son and heir, why would I...?”

“He did, but not in such a way you can try him for,” says Lady Amaeda. Then she turns to her father. “Relax, Father, I'm sure you did not mean to. I'm sure you didn't even realise you'd done it. It's not as if you stuck your sword through him.” A pause, and then she laughs again. “Well, not _that_ sort of sword.”

It takes a moment for it to sink in for Ned. _Oh. Of course that's what she meant. That he did the same thing to his son as he did to his daughter._ And yet Ned struggles to believe it, even more than he struggles to believe her. He knows this sort of thing happens to all sorts of girls, and to some boys – but he's always thought it would be weaker, quieter boys, boys like Averick, or sometimes he fears boys like Bran, or even boys like himself. But not boys like Aleas – like Brandon or Robb. Sons and heirs. _But just because you struggle to imagine something, does not mean it isn't true,_ Jon Arryn once taught him.

A pause, and then Tristen scoffs. “And now she means to mark me for a deviant as well.”

“What, because fucking your own daughter is so normal?!” Amaeda's voice heightens in her fury, so she suddenly sounds very young. _She is young. What is she, seventeen?_ “Is that what you think? It's like fucking whores: everyone does it, it's just improper to talk about?” Tristen curses under his breath, and Amaeda continues. “What was it you used to say to me father? 'Relax, sweetling, I'm just trying to teach you. This is what you're good for.'” A pause, and then her voice breaks on the next words. “Did you tell Aleas the same thing?”

“Liar!” and Ned jumps himself then as Amaeda cries out and goes tumbling to the ground, and behind her he sees young Averick, almost toppling over himself as he barely gets his cane back on the ground in time, having just used it to push her over. “Father wouldn't do that, and I won't let you take him away from me–”

“Averick–” Amaeda turns to look at him, but apparently she can't bear to meet his eye for too long, and so her gaze quickly drops back to the floor. “You don't understand.”

“I understand what you are,” Averick says. “I know that you're evil, you're sick at heart, and you're angry the rest of aren't, so you'll make everyone think we're just as bad as you – but we're not, Father is _good_ , like Aleas, and–”

Amaeda laughs hysterically. “You don't understand,” she says again.

“Averick, that's enough,” says Lord Tristen. _You're not helping,_ Ned imagines he's thinking.

“But Father–“

“Enough, I said.”

Behind him, Ned hears a small cough. “Father?” and he turns to see young Bran in the crowd. “I'm quite tired. I think Lord Averick might be too,” he says, and Averick glowers at him. “I think we children should have gone to bed awhile ago.”

“I'm not a child!” Averick insists, but Ned ignores him.

“Right. Well, I'll just–” He hesitates. He'd like to go put Bran to bed. He'd like to tuck his son beneath the sheets, kiss his brow, tell him a story. He'd like to be a father tonight, not a lord. And yet he knows he can't. He has to deal with this first. And this won't be dealt with for a long time yet – will he have to drag Tristen and Amaeda both back north in chains?

“I'll put them to bed, Father,” comes another voice, Robb, standing by Bran's side and holding his little hand. Ned sighs. That's Robb, ever responsible, ever dutiful, ever ready to take on his Father's tasks. So much like his mother. Sometimes Ned worries about Robb, sometimes he thinks he treats his son and heir too much like an heir to train and not enough like a son to love, but he feels like he must – he doesn't want Robb to come into power like he did, not knowing what it means or how to use it, but desperately having to pretend, for everyone around him needs him to know what he's doing. He wants his son to be prepared, like he never was, for Ned loves him dearly. He hopes that if Robb ever has to make a decision like this one, he will know what to do.

“Very good,” he nods, and Averick opens his mouth as if to protest, but a harsh look from his father has him sighing and walking off behind Bran, pouting all the while. Lady Amaeda, however, has still not risen from her position on the floor.

“My lord,” she says quietly, not looking him in the eye, “if you are to take either of us to trial – will I have to go back north?”

“...I'm afraid so,” he answers, and she says nothing, but then there's yet another voice behind him.

“Good.”

Lord Ennett is back.

 


	8. Above

Amaeda's eyes dart up, wide with some emotion Ned can't read. She gets up, standing straight. “Ennett.” She says.

Another hush comes over the group, and Lord Ennett approaches them slowly, entering the circle to gaze over his wife coldly. Perhaps unwittingly, Amaeda takes a step back. The he turns to Ned: “did I understand you correctly? You mean to take her back North?”

“Only temporarily,” he says, gritting his teeth. “While she and her father both stand trial. After that... well it depends on the results of the trial.”

“The results you will decide,” Ennett points out, and Ned feels ill again. _Yes, and what says I'll make a better decision then than I will now?_ But still, he wants to do everything possible to get to the truth. Ennett scoffs. “It would be convenient to be rid of her.”

Ned blanches. “You would have me murder your wife for you.”

“It's not murder if you do it.”

He balls his fist. _I could murder you here and now,_ he thinks, imagining Cat's face if he heard a man say such a thing about his own wife. But he must restrain his temper. Before he can speak, however, Lady Amaeda herself interjects:

“And what if he believes me, my lord?” she says, standing tall and proud. She does not cry this time. “Or mayhaps even if he doesn't believe me, not about most things, but he doesn't believe Father either. I could be a liar, but not a murderer. What would you do with me then? Would you throw me into the sea yourself?”

“I wouldn't do such a thing,” says Lord Ennett. _But not for your sakes,_ he need not add. Then he turns to Lord Tristen. “I'd simply send you back home, and wait for you to die. If he wants you so much, he can have you.”

Ned half-expects Amaeda to laugh hysterically again. He almost wants to himself. _Of all the people to believe her, he hates her for it anyway._ Instead she blanches white. “You try that, I'll throw _myself_ in the sea,” she spits, and Ennett simply shrugs, as if to say that does not concern him. Amaeda shakes her head and closes her eyes. “I should have seen this coming. Why didn't I see this coming? And _you_ –” she turns to Ned with fury in her voice, catching him off guard. As she stares however, her anger all fades from her. “You don't believe me, do you?”

Ned hesitates. “I don't know what to believe,” he admits.

And Lady Amaeda nods sadly. “That's more than I should have expected.”

Ned is confused, but he can't ask anymore questions before he hears another voice. “For fuck's sake boy,” hisses Lord Rolland over his son's shoulder, “I know you think you've made a mistake, but you can't tell Lord Stark to kill a woman just to solve your problems for you, the girl is your wife–”

“She's a lying whore, I want nothing to do with her–”

“And you're a spoiled brat!” snaps Lord Rolland. “My bloody fault I know, gave you everything you ever asked for, felt bad about making you grow up on these shithole islands. All those fucking books. Well this isn't a book, and she might be a lying whore, but she's _your_ lying whore. Now be a man and take some responsibility!”

There's a long pause as Lord Ennett simply glares at his father, struggling for a response, but then he gives in. “Fine,” he says, and then turns back to his wife. “You. It's still our wedding night. We ought to be in bed.”

And then Amaeda laughs. “I see. You've found all I'm good for too.”

“Enough, Amaeda!” shouts Lord Tristen. She turns to him and blinks. “It's done, alright? You've lost. No-one believes you.” Ned frowns. _I believe her,_ he thinks, which – he doesn't really, but he doesn't completely disbelieve her either. “Not even your lord husband.” And Ned suspects he does believe her, he just doesn't care. “You've gambled, and you've lost. You always were too reckless girl. You were a damn fool making accusations you couldn't prove.”

“I have proof father,” she says quietly, and Ned frowns deeper. _What?!_ Why did she not say this earlier? Amaeda hesitates, biting her lip as if she's afraid of what she just said, but then she sighs. “I didn't mean to say that. I didn't mean to use it. But I do have proof – I have proof with me always now,” she says. “I have proof of _something_.”

Tristen blinks like he has no idea what she's on about. Ned can relate. Before either of them can ask anything, however, Ennett grabs her wrist and tugs her along. “Come on. To bed.”

And Amaeda gives a sickening smile. “As you wish, my lord.”

It's more than Ned can bear. “My lady, you don't have to–”

“Don't I?” And he blinks. She's right. Lord Ennett is her lord husband, and if he wishes to have his way with her, he knows there's nothing either of them can do. Ned wants to believe most men wouldn't want to have their wives if they knew said wives were unwilling, but Lady Amaeda is, while clearly not enthusiastic, willing enough. Resigned. The woman who ripped her family apart to, mayhaps, seek justice on the man who raped her seems to have just given up. “As I thought,” she says. “It seems we must both do our duty.”

* * *

Sansa wants to drink. She knows she's not really allowed, she's just a girl, she's only given wine at table with her lord father and lady mother, with their permission, but the thinks that is what a woman grown would do right now.

She jumps when someone lays a hand upon her shoulder. “Sansa? Are you alright?”

It's Robb. She turns and smiles at him, and is about to say _of course, don't worry about me,_ but when she tries she starts to stammer stupidly. “I – I–” And she turns her head, embarrassed by her own lack of eloquence.

“Hey, hey, it's alright, I understand.” says Robb, squeezing her shoulder comfortingly, and still, she doubts he does. “You're just a girl. You shouldn't have to deal with all this.”

She knows Robb means well, but still, his words bother her for some reason. “I'm not that much younger than you,” she says, even though she's never felt any younger.

He raises an eyebrow. “Three years, Sansa. Closer to four, in truth.”

She pouts at him. “Alright, but don't go acting like you're a man grown just because they let you poke things with swords. We're both children.”

Robb sighs. “I know. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Believe me, I've never felt less like a man grown.” He sits down at one of the benches that now lies abandoned and, somewhat hesitantly, pours himself a glass of wine. He's really meant to ask permission also, although he's old enough he almost always gets it, whereas she only does on special occasions, or when they're sick of her arguing with Arya. Robb turns to her. “Would you like some?”

“No thank you.” She doesn't actually like wine much in truth. Instead she just watches her brother drink. “Is Father really going to bring them both to trial?”

Robb sighs. “If he's said so, he probably will. It's not like him to lie,” he says, and right, Sansa knows that.

“They'll be at Winterfell, then,” she says. “Do you think he'll keep them locked in the dungeons the whole time?” It seems wrong to put a noble lady and lord in chains like common criminals, but... “or will they be living among us?” And that seems worse.

“...I don't know,” says Robb, and a frown comes over him, as if he's just thought of something. “Sansa, I'm sure Father will protect you–”

“That's not what I'm worried about,” she insists, even though in part it is, but she doesn't want her brother to think her craven. “It's just... Lady Amaeda, you know how awful she was. I don't think I want to put up with her for that long.”

Robb gives her a wry smile. “I'm sure we'll make it through.”

_But we've only been here a few days, and I feel like I'm losing my mind,_ thinks Sansa, but she bites her tongue. Perhaps she's overreacting. She still thinks Lady Amaeda is awful, but still, she hasn't spoken to the woman since that first disastrous attempt – that only happened because she wanted to make friends, so if she ignores her, Amaeda will likely ignore her in turn. So what is she frightened of?

The dais sits empty, the bride and groom gone to bed seemingly for good now. “He hates her,” she mutters.

“Wait, what? Who hates who now?”

“Lord Ennett,” she explains. “He hates Lady Amaeda.”

Robb blinks. “So do you.”

“Yes but I'm not _married_ to her.”

She sighs. Robb doesn't understand, he can't understand. She doesn't really understand herself. It's just... she thought they were one of her songs, like the first Lady Skyer, the beautiful noble lady and the wild man she turned into a lord. But Lady Amaeda is no true lady, and Lord Ennett is no true lord. Sansa is not so young she doesn't know he is making love to her now, nor that making love is not at all the proper term for it, but she is young enough she knows no others. _Except the one._

It frightens her, the thought that a woman good steal a man's heart and then have him turn on her so quickly, and then be trapped with him, with no-one ready to protect her, his to do what he likes with.

_But I am not like her,_ she tells herself. _I am a maid, pure and not yet flowered. Whether she is awful or unlucky, I am not like her, I will never be like her. My father wouldn't let that happen to me._

“Sansa, are you alright?”

“Yes, of course,” she says.

* * *

Once the bride and groom are gone for true, the feast dies down and the serving girls come out to clean things away for them. Lord Tristen seems to have returned to his chambers also, which perhaps Ned should have intervened in, but he doesn't think it worth worrying about – there's little chance of fleeing justice in an island so far from any safe harbour, and men of Tristen's stature usually have too much honour to try. And if Tristen is innocent, Ned would like to spare him the humiliation of chains as long as possible.

Once the serving girls come out he spots the same one he did before, the girl who looked like Arya, and Ned knows he needs to go talk to her – especially now he has something resembling a plan for the Skyers. However right now someone else is talking to her, another servant, seemingly an older woman. “Mother, I'm fine,” says the girl. “You needn't worry about me so much. Come on, you should be in the kitchens–”

_Mother._ Ned knows he needs to talk to this woman, even more than he needs to talk to her daughter, so he steps forward and coughs so abruptly they both jump. The girl, however, relaxes when she sees him. “Lord Stark,” she says with a nod. “Forgive me, my lord, we were just talking. Is there something I can help you with?”

“I just thought I might need to...” but he trails off as his drift over to the other woman. She does not relax, carefully avoiding his eye, and Ned soon realises he recognises her. It's that cook again, Pia. “Is this your mother?” he asks.

The girl looks surprised, but nods. “Ah, yes. Mother, this is Lord Eddard Stark.”

“We've met,” says the woman, finally meeting his eye, and Ned frowns. _Barely,_ he wants to point out, but he doesn't want to frighten her any further. She was frightened of him when they first met too.

_Or mayhaps not me,_ he thinks. _Mayhaps she's frightened of Lord Stark._

“Excuse me,” he says to the serving girl, “would you mind if your mother and I had spoke alone for a few minutes?”

She blinks, puzzled, but nods. “Of course, m'lord.” _It's hardly as if she has a choice._ She looks back and forth between him and her mother, who nods slightly to her, which makes her frown. _Mayhaps she thinks I'm her father,_ thinks Ned, and he almost laughs. That would happen to him, wouldn't it?

Then she walks away, and Pia stiffens even more once her daughter leaves, so Ned stands as far away as she can to make her more comfortable. It doesn't seem to work. “Your daughter,” he says stupidly.

“Her name is Rys,” says Pia, and then she drops her eyes, as if she's afraid she's been impertinent. “M'lord.”

Ned nods. He should have asked that earlier. _She's very pretty,_ he almost wants to tell her, just to be polite, but he's slowly realising that would make everything much worse. _Dear gods, what's happened to her?_ “Is she happy here?” he asks. Pia looks surprised. “Are you?”

She nods. “Lord Longthorpe is good to us, m'lord. Never even threatened to turn me out on the streets when I had a bastard on me, nor the babe. I couldn't hope for more.”

Ned sighs deeply. No, mayhaps she couldn't. “Pia, if there's anything I can do for you–”

He must be standing closer than he thought he was, because gently he raises a hand to her, as if about to wipe a tear from her cheek. She flinches away from him.

“M'lord is very kind,” she says. “But there's nothing you can do for me.”

* * *

Robb put them to bed ages ago, but Bran still can't sleep. Averick is keeping him up. Bran wouldn't mind if they were talking, laughing and chatting into the night like he does with his brothers and sisters sometimes, but Averick has his back turned to him and won't say anything. That's what's keeping Bran up.

It would probably be easier if he were sleeping in his own bed, even if he was a bit cold, but Robb put him into Averick's rooms without discusssion. _I want you both to sleep through the night. Try not to worry,_ he said before kissing Bran's brow, and Bran rather got the impression he was meant to keep an eye on Averick, make sure he didn't do anything stupid, like attack his sister again – _I could kill her,_ he said, and Bran knows Averick wouldn't actually do that, he wouldn't even know how to, but the fact he even said it makes Bran shudder. He considered telling Father about it, but Averick is his friend, he thinks, and Bran couldn't do that to him. Besides, Father is busy.

“Are you angry at me?” he asks, and Averick doesn't answer him, so he assumes that means yes. He sighs. “I'm sorry. But this isn't for us to deal with. My father can figure it out.” Although it would be nice if Father would explain what he's figured to anyone else.

“He'll take my father away from me,” Averick mutters into the pillows, and Bran frowns.

“Only for a little while,” he says, “while there's a trial. And then, if he's innocent like you say–”

Averick rolls on his side to face him, and Bran expects him to be angry that Bran isn't acting like Lord Tristen couldn't possibly be guilty again. And maybe he is, but that's not what he says. “You don't understand,” says Averick. “Even if he's not gone long, I'll – I'm the Heir to the Bluebell. It will be my castle when he's away. And as soon as it is, the vultures will come down around me. He's always warned me of that.”

Bran frowns. “Your father told you that?”

“He's never lied to spare my feelings,” Averick says. “He's always tried to prepare me for it, but... you don't know what it's like, the way people look at me. The way they don't look at me. Especially _her_.” Bran doesn't have to ask who he means. “They all think I'm some helpess cripple they can use for whatever they like, and... I'm not that, I'm not. But I don't know if I'm strong enough to prove them wrong. Not without him.”

Bran's heart hurts for him, so much he almost doesn't care whether what Lady Amaeda says is true or not, if punishing Lord Skyer would hurt his friend so much. _No, that's wrong,_ he quickly tells himself. _Justice must be fair and equal for all, Father always says._ “I'm sure you will,” he tells Averick, and at the sight of him struggling to hold back tears, he stretches out a hand to him. “I'm sure everything is going to be alright.”

But then Averick pulls away from him, and gives Bran a more withering look that he's ever seen before. It makes him flinch. “You're a _child_ ,” Averick spits.

Bran is wounded. And he says: “So are you.”

* * *

Ned jumps when a hand lands on his shoulder, although he does his best to hide it. It would not do for the Warden of North to act like a skittish colt. “Father?” And he looks up to see Robb, his firstborn. “Sansa and I were getting tired, so we were going to go to bed.”

He nods. “Right. You should have been in bed awhile ago.” _But I was distracted._ He sighs, and Robb doesn't move, he only stands there and frowns.

“Are you alright, Father?” he asks, taking a seat by Ned's side, and he nods.

“I am.” Because nothing's happened to him, and he knows it's not his right to feel so low – he is simply overwhelmed by what's happened to others, or what may have happened to others. To Lady Amaeda, and to Pia, and to Lyanna. He always knew Robert was less than reliable, but still, he believed his friend about how she must have disappeared. What Rhaegar must have done to her. Because he didn't think Lyanna would leave them willingly; for all her wildness she was loyal, and he always thought that reluctant as she was, she would agree to wed, for the good of the family. He thought he knew her.

But he increasingly feels like he doesn't know anyone.

“I know this must be hard for you,” says Robb. “But I know you'll do the right thing.” A pause. “We will have to be careful though, with him at Winterfell, the girls – I know you'd think he'd be too smart to try anything while on trial, but–”

“Please stop,” mutters Ned. He knows Robb is only trying to help, but Robb should _have_ to help – Robb is just a boy. This is Ned's burden, not his. Not yet.

_Or mayhaps I'm afraid of what he might say._ Ned frowns as soon as he thinks it. _Have I gone mad? Robb is my son, how could I not trust him?_ But Tristen was his friend, and Brandon was his brother, and _Father_ – he does not know he can trust them anymore. He knows Robb is a good lad, honourable and brave, but he has a temper that speaks of a touch of the wolfblood – although that temper could be Cat's blood as much as his. And he's too close to the Greyjoy boy, and Ned has always let that stand out of pity for his hostage.

But none of that means anything – Robb is his son.

Robb is his son, but more than that, Robb is his heir.

“...Sorry, Father,” says Robb, and Ned flinches. He didn't mean to hurt the boy's feelings. “Still: I'm sure you'll do the right thing. I'm sure you'll do your duty.”

Family, duty, honour. Robb is so much like his mother, he always has been. For a moment, Ned selfishly wishes Cat was was here – he thinks she'd know what to do, or at least, she would more than he does.

Then a horrible thought comes to mind, one he can't shake away. _Cat._ No, Brandon wouldn't do that to his own betrothed, would he? _Or mayhaps he'd feel within rights to do that to his betrothed. Mayhaps many men would._ She bled upon their wedding night, but he was clumsy on their wedding night, and he's always known Cat to do her duty – her father wed her to him to seal an alliance, and so she would do whatever she had to to do so, to let nothing get in the way. Even trick him, if she must.

Ned shakes his head. He cannot think like this, else he'll go mad. He smiles at his son ( _at least I think he's my son_ ). “Get some sleep Robb,” he says. “I promise I'll explain more in the morning,” he lies.

Robb nods and leaves him, walking back over to Sansa, who looks no happier than either of them. They leave, and Ned is left without his family, and mayhaps without his honour, but with his duty.

Lady Amaeda said she had proof.

But what could prove that?

 


	9. Before

Robert taught him how to pick locks, years ago back at the Eyrie. He said it would be good for sneaking into ladies' chambers, some day, and Ned thought he would have no use of the skill but he was too shy to tell his friend that. He's grateful now.

Lady Amaeda's door swings open with a creak, and Ned darts his head around nervously, like a boy of three and ten again, afraid he'll be seen. This is not his castle. Still, there is no-one else in the corridor, and Ned is thankful the Longthorpe seat is so understaffed. _Mayhaps not understaffed enough._ But he shakes the thought away.

He closes the door behind him as quietly as possible, and takes a deep breath as he examines Lady Amaeda's rooms as well as he can in the dim moonlight. It's surprisingly bare, given the girl was all but trapped here not a day ago, but maybe she just didn't think she'd be using it much after. It is however filled with towering piles of books he has to be careful not to knock over. _What am I looking for?_ he wonders. Proof of some sort, but what? The only thing he can think of is stained sheets, what's usually used to prove a girl's lost her maidenhead, but that doesn't work – those couldn't prove who she had lost her maidenhead too. What then? A diary, mayhaps, from the years she claims her Father used her, buried somewhere among these books – but that seems quite careless, leaving something so important among her things to be read or stolen by the servants. And a child's diary could easily be faked years later.

_Whatever she's hiding, where would she hide it?_ But when he thinks a second time, he wonders, would she hide it? If it's proof of an accusation she just made for all the world to hear? But she said she didn't want to use her proof, and really, why wouldn't she?

Of course, that's if he believes her. And that, really, the crux of his problem.

Ned tries to think, tries to remember the layout of Sansa's room, tries to remember if there are places he avoids, lest he discover a girlish secret and upset her. _Under the bed,_ he thinks. _Yes, girls hide things under their beds._

So he drops to his knees, wincing in pain – he is too old for this. There is even less light down here so he can't really see anything beneath the bed, he can only stick his hand under it and rummage about blindly. He whacks his knuckles against something hard and heavy and curses, shaking his hand in pain. Once he's recovered, however, he realises he's discovered something and runs his fingers across the coarse texture. Wood. _A chest?_

He slides it out from beneath the bed, and sure enough, it is a chest. Lock-picking is much harder in the dark, but after a lot of growling and cursing, and breaking a nail, he manages. Robert said he had a miraculous talent for it, and clearly one wasted on him. _Shame you're such an honourable shit, Ned,_ he said fondly. _You'd make a great liar._

The thought makes him wince, but he can't afford to be distracted. When he opens the box the lid smacks against the ground with a thud, making him look around nervously, but he knows there's no-one here to hear him.

When he looks at what's in the box, he can just make it out, white in the moonlight. He can't tell what it is though, it looks like just a series of twisted lines. He reaches in and picks up one of those lines, finding it cool to the touch and fairly light, and holds it up to the window. When he does, horrified realisation dawns on him. _Bones_. But they don't look right somehow, stunted almost. He doesn't know what they're from, they're too small to be a man's, but maybe a hare's or a cat's or a – child's?

“He called her Rhaenys.” Ned jumps and turns his head to see Lady Amaeda standing in the doorway, wrapped in a navy robe. She holds a candle. “After Prince Rhaegar's daughter. I wasn't sure why he bothered to name her at all, it's not as if she ever lived to hear it, not even a few days.” A pause. “Then again, I'm one to talk. I'm the one who dragged her bones across the Bite with me.”

Ned blinks, not following. “I thought you were with your lord husband?” he asks.

Amaeda sighs as she shuts the door behind her, placing the candle atop one of the piles of books. Her hair glows red in the candlelight, and she moves around to sit atop her bed. He stands. “It turns out, Ennett sleeps like the dead after he's come,” she explains, pulling her robe around her tighter. “At least for a few minutes. I should be able to make it back before he notices.”

“You do seem adept at sneaking around.”

Lady Amaeda shrugs. “I learned to hide young.”

Ned swallows a lump in his throat. “Are you alright, my lady?”

She nods. “I'll get used to it,” she says, and Ned might believe that least of anything she's said. Her eyes drift down back to the box of bones. “Aren't you going to ask me who 'he' was?”

“I was getting there,” he says, “but under the circumstances, I would presume... your lord father?”

She shakes her head. “Close, but not quite,” she says. “My brother.”

Ned looks between her and the box. “I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“Of course not, I haven't explained it yet,” she tells him. “And before you ask: no, she wasn't mine. Funny thing for Father to say, that – only times we ever touched each other were when _he_ wanted to watch.” Her face twists in a bitter scowl, and Ned still isn't sure he believes her, but...

“Was this Aleas' child?” he asks, and she nods. “And the mother?”

Ned flinches to remember all the ways he's answered that question, with lies and fury and fear, but it is not so difficult for Lady Amaeda. “Some whore his friends bought for him,” she explains. “It took me by surprise, I never thought my noble brother the type, but I suppose he wanted to prove... and of course, the first woman he ever had he got a bastard on her. His seed was potent.” She laughs bitterly. “I never learnt the name. I did see her though, when my father kicked her out of the cottage Aleas' had set her up in. She wasn't even pretty. Some big-titted peasant who scowled at everything.”

Ned blinks. “He put her up in a cottage?”

“I told him he was being stupid, that he was better off forgetting the woman, that Father would find out and then it would be another excuse, another reason he needed to–” a pause, and then she sighs. “But Aleas was better than that. He was better than me. He was better than everyone.”

Ned is nodding along, trying to put the whole thing together. “He wanted to take care of her.” _Mother and child both._

“Does that surprise you so much, my lord?” Lady Amaeda asks, and Ned knows he is the last person to be surprised. “Aleas... he tried so hard to be good. He knew he wasn't going to marry her, of course not, but he thought he could honour his bastard as much as possible, treat them like a trueborn child, even bring them to the Bluebell once Father was finally gone. Aleas was always like that, you see. If he could only be good enough, pure enough, noble enough it would mean he wasn't... what Father said...”

She trails off again, wringing her hands together in her lap, and Ned frowns. “Then what happened?” he asks. “To the baby? To him?”

Amaeda looks back down to the box. “The bones are pretty,” she mutters, and Ned blinks. That is not the word he would have used. “Compared to the body, at least. She was horrible to look at, grey and twisted, legless, her arms sticking out all wrong, her chest so caved in you could never have fit lungs in there.” She pauses. “I said the poor thing was fortunate she'd been born dead, the gods had spared her a cruel, pointless struggle for life. It was the one time he ever was angry at me.”

Ned sighs deeply. He can imagine a man, a boy being so grieved at the loss of his child, grieved enough to do what Aleas did. And yet, it all just doesn't connect. “But why?” he asks. The question might have no answer. “Why was she born like that?”

It turns out, the question has a very simple answer. “A pox.”

“A whore gave your brother the pox?”

Amaeda shakes her head. “No,” she says. “He gave her the pox.”

Ned frowns deeply. It might just be coming together now. “And he got it from your father?”

She nods, and laughs again. “It's a cruel disease, you see,” she says. “It doesn't do anything to the man who catches it, but his children... they become twisted and malformed, ruined in their mother's wombs. They're lucky if they're only born crippled.”

“...Averick,” Ned realises.

“I read about it, you see,” Amaeda says. “When I was twelve. I loved our library, you know, it was the one part of that castle I was reluctant to leave. It had these great wide windows from which you could see the whole world, and the whole world could see you. I always felt safe there.” She pauses. “I must have read every book half a dozen times, even the boring old textbooks Aleas couldn't believe anyone would ever be interested in. I loved those books, on medicine and science, until...” she sighs. “It's not a disease that's mentioned in many books. It's too rare, you see, too localised. All the Crannogmen have it, because they've all been breeding swamp filth into each other for a thousand years, but most men have the good sense not to travel there so they don't get it. But not my father.”

Ned knows the words she speaks aren't quite true, he knows the Crannogmen aren't all pox-ridden, but he understands why she believes it. _Because she blames them,_ he thinks. _Because they gave it to him, and he gave it to her, he gave it to Aleas, and now Aleas is dead._

“And your young brother?” he asks.

“After that, I couldn't look at him,” she explains. “He thinks I hate him – and I don't, really, but I wish he'd never been born. I know you must think I'm awful, but... I look at my little brother and all I see is what my father's done to me.”

“He seems quite a sweet lad to me.”

“He is. Mostly.” And she rubs at her back where Averick struck her with his cane, and Ned frowns, wondering if his assessment of Averick Skyer was no more accurate than his assessment of his father. “For now. But once he's a little older, old enough to meet Father's tastes, old enough to realise how much Father's made him believe he needs a true lord watching over him to secure his birthright... Father will ruin him, just as he ruined me.”

Ned sighs. Perhaps she is awful, but... if she speaks true, how can he blame her? _Surely she must speak true,_ he thinks. _The bones are right there_.

“So your father spent time in the Neck, with the Crannogmen, and caught this pox,” he says.

“Can you be surprised?” she asks. “The Crannogmen all look like children.”

Ned chooses to ignore that. “At later, he started to... use you and your brother. And you think he gave this pox to the both of you.”

Amaeda averts her eyes and nods. “I knew,” she says. “Since I was two and ten, I've known how much he's ruined me. Sometimes I wondered if he did it on purpose, if he wanted to make me unmarriageable, so he could keep me with him always. But that seemed pointless. After all, didn't he have my brother? His son and heir would never leave him.” A pause. “I should have warned Averick, so it wouldn't be such a shock, but I couldn't. He always wanted to pretend it wasn't happening, that we were any noble family. He wouldn't even let himself hate Father for it, because he wanted so much to be his perfect heir. And I never understood it, but... I wanted that for him too. I wanted him to be happy.”

Ned frowns. “Do you blame yourself?”

Amaeda scoffs. “Well of course,” she says. “But not as much as I blame _him_. I meant what I said, you know. He murdered my brother.” The fury in her voice is so raw he's sure she must mean in some way. “When poor Rhaenys came out... as she did, he only then realised. That Father had ruined him for good. That he could never be the perfect heir, for he could not perform his most important task. He could not sire another generation.” She hides her face beneath her golden-red curls, and Ned wonders if she is crying. “So then he thought he was nothing. Nothing but what Father had made him. Nothing but a _hole_. And he'd rather die than be that. So he did.” And she sniffs, almost like a child.

Ned feels sick, in both his heart and his belly. “I'm so sorry,” he says.

“I didn't ask you here for apologies.”

He frowns. “Why did _he_ ask me here?” he wonders aloud. “If he knew you had this awful secret to keep, why wouldn't he try and warn me away?”

“Because you were his friend, and he wanted to see you,” she says. “He would never have thought I might speak to you of what happened. He certainly would never think you might actually do something about it. You see, Lord Stark: he never understood he was doing anything wrong. He was Lord of the Bluebell, and we were of the Bluebell, so we were his to do with as he liked. He was _above_ us.” She pauses. “I think that's what Aleas meant, but I'm not quite sure. In truth, I always hated our house words anyway.”

_Above._ As house words went, the Skyers' were among the vaguest in the realm, and Ned had never truly understood what it was meant to mean - he assumed it just referred to the rain, from the old story, the skies that had opened up and showed their ancestors what their land could truly be.

But perhaps Amaeda was right, perhaps Tristen truly did consider himself above such things - as goodness, as honour, as his own children. Perhaps all the Skyers did.

Perhaps all heirs did.

"Why didn't you show me this earlier?" he asks, nodding to the box.

"Because I couldn't do that to him," says Amaeda. "To Aleas. He was always so frightened someone would find out, what that would do to him, and I didn't want to dishonour his memory. I didn't think I'd have to. I thought... I could simply tell the truth, and you would dole out justice, and then I could live forever on my own little island with my perfect prince. Gods I'm a fool." She laughs. "I owe your daughter an apology, by the way."

Ned blinks, taken aback. What does that have to do with anything? "What for?"

"She came to my rooms earlier, wanting to make friends. I was... rather cruel," she says, and Ned frowns. Well, that does explain why Sansa has been so sullen these past few days. "I know I shouldn't have, but I suppose – she frightened me. She said she _admired_ me, and she didn't even know me, but she thought because I was beautiful, I was perfect. Head full of songs, that one. In my experience, such girls rarely fare well once they grow up."

_Girls like yourself?_ Ned sighs. "I'll talk to Sansa."

Amaeda winces. "Please don't tell her all this," she says. "She's an innocent girl."

"You've already told her half of it."

"...I know." She sighs. "I'll didn't want any children here. I knew I couldn't do anything about Averick, but..."

She trails off, and Ned finds himself shuffling from foot to foot, unsure of what to say. "What about your mother?" he blurts out.

"Did I kill her, do you mean?" asks Amaeda. Ned blanches. "No." But from her voice, he can tell she meant what she said earlier - she wishes she did.

"That's not what I meant," he says. "But still: how did she die?"

"The gods only know, Lord Stark," says Lady Amaeda. "Mayhaps Father's right. Mayhaps she did slip and fall."

_Or mayhaps he's right about something else._ "Or mayhaps..." says Ned, "...she did mean to do something after all. Mayhaps _he_ killed her, lest she ruin his reputation."

“Mayhaps.” But Ned can see Amaeda hardening herself against the theory. Whatever else she is, she is a woman who doesn't take being wrong easily. “But I doubt it. Father chose himself a wife who would never dare contradict him – he was so careful to avoid a scandal. It was the one way he was like Aleas. It's why he wouldn't have that poor woman on our lands anymore; he couldn't have it getting about that his son got a bastard on a whore, could he?”

If nothing else, she has had her revenge that way – Lord Skyer's name will mean nothing but scandal from now on. But so will hers, and when he thinks of her now, the position she's put herself in, he wonders if it was truly worth it. “My lady, will you be alright?” he asks. “With Lord Ennett?”

She shrugs. “I'll get used to it. What choice do I have?” And she's right – what choice _does_ she have? “It won't be what I expected, but what ever is? Besides, I think deep in my heart, I knew. That's why I had to make sure I was properly wedded before I spoke, so no matter what, he couldn't send me back there. I'd have the Bite to protect me. I'd be safe.” And Ned remembers how eager Ennett was to have his new wife executed, just to be rid of her, and he doesn't think he's every found anyone less safe.

“Mayhaps you would have been better if you had done that,” he says, and Amaeda blinks. “The way you did it... walking in naked to the hall. I'm afraid you made everyone think you were mad.”

“They tore my dress,” she points out, and Ned frowns.

“Did that not bother you?”

“...Not really, no,” she says. “Father was always very careful with my clothes, lest anyone notice something amiss. He didn't really hurt my body, he knew he didn't need to – I wasn't going to dare fight him.” She pauses. “I was eager for it, tonight – I know that seems strange, but... I wanted it to be good. I wanted to know it could be good, with a man I loved. I wanted to know I wasn't so broken. And it was good.” She winces. “The first time.”

“My lady, I–”

“I told myself he wouldn't mind,” she says. “I told myself he'd understand, that it wasn't my fault, it wasn't my doing, not really. I told myself that when he saw me at that tourney, he saw more than a pretty girl, he saw – he saw _me._ ” She pauses. “You know, I never thought I was mad. Then again, I suppose that's how madness works, isn't it?”

“You're not mad, Amaeda,” he tells her. “You're just a very unfortunate young woman.”

She blinks at him. “...You believe me,” she says, and he only just realises that yes, he does. She sounds like she can't believe it herself. She smiles, and she does look so beautiful when she smiles. “Well, if you say so my lord. So: will you help me?”

In truth, he can't _help_ her. He can't repair the damage done. He can't give her her love back, or her womb back, or her brother back. He can only give her vengeance, justice, but whatever he calls it there will be a cost. He thinks of young Averick, no more than eight years, only just now his father's heir and the vultures that will descend if he becomes a crippled boy lord. Ned sighs. “You ask a lot of me.”

“I know. But who else can I ask?”

That is true. He sighs and looks toward the door. “I ought to go.”

She nods. “I don't think my lord husband would be pleased to know I have another man in my rooms.” Ned's not sure he's ever heard a less funny jape. Still, he swings the door open without another word, and just as he's about to leave she calls out to him:

“I know you might think I'm awful,” she says. “And you're probably right. But you know how it is when you're a highborn maid,” and no, Ned doesn't know that at all. “Everything I am, I owe to my lord father.”

* * *

Ned knows he's being foolish. He ought to take what he's learned and bring it with him when he takes the man to trial, there is no need to cause a commotion _now_. And yet, it seems the wolfblood can get the better of him too, for he finds himself knocking on Lord Tristen's door at the early hours of the morning.

From the look on his face, Ned would say he roused Tristen from his sleep, but still, the man gives a friendly smile, as if this night has changed nothing at all. “Ned,” he says, and opens the door to let him in, closing it behind them without a hint of suspicion.

Ned sighs heavily. Why did he come here? “I've been talking to your daughter, my lord.”

A pause, and then Tristen scoffs. “Gods, what has she said now? Before long she'll be claiming I killed Aegon III's queen.”

“She said a lot of things,” Ned says quickly. It seems Amaeda and her father both have the habit of making japes at the worst moment. Back on the battlefield, it was charming; it made Ned feel less scared to know Tristen wasn't scared. “But none of that is as important as what she showed me.”

Tristen blinks, puzzled. “Showed you?” He sighs heavily. “Look, I don't know what trick she's pulling now but – I promise I'll be able to work around it, okay, I won't be foolish enough that you'll have to kill me.”

_Is that what he thinks I'm trying to do? Warn him?_ The thought gets under his skin. He can imagine Brandon giving him a warm laugh, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, reassuring him he'd be alright, telling him he worried too much. “Bones, Tristen,” he says. “She showed me a child's bones. A child she said was your son's bastard.”

Tristen curses under his breath. “Look, Ned, Aleas might have made some mistakes but I thought she'd have enough decency not to drag his name through the mud–”

“A child whose bones were twisted and stunted, like she'd been born both dead and crippled,” Ned continues. “A child whose bones must resemble your youngest son's. And she said it was for the same reason: a pox you caught in the Neck, and passed on to your son. And your daughter. A pox that wounded both your children.”

Tristen says nothing to that, but Ned watches him ball his fist, like he can't believe Ned would say these things. _Now_ he feels betrayed. Ned sighs deeply. “Tristen, I'm tired. I'm confused. I just want to know the truth. My lord, if our friendship means anything to you – please be honest with me.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Tristen snaps. “Alright, yes, I fucked her.” And Ned's jaw drops open. “But don't look at me like that! She wasn't some trembling child, she was a woman flowered, and she came to me begging for it – she was a bitch in heat that one; I had to do _something_ before she ruined the family name! And I wouldn't have touched Aleas, he was my heir, he was meant to carry on my legacy, I didn't have the right–”

“And you had the right to touch her?!” Ned shouts, disbelieving. “She was a girl of eleven, she was your _daughter_ –”

“Yes, my daughter!” says Tristen. “Which makes her _mine_. Which makes it none of _your_ business–”

And then Ned slams him against the wall, gripping his neck tight enough to snap it, the wolfblood pulsing in his veins. It his head, it's not only Tristen's life he holds in his hand, but all of them, Rhaegar and Robert and Roose and _Brandon_ , all these fucking men, all these fucking _heirs_ who think because they're born to some patch of land they're all but gods, they have the right to whatever they want, whoever they want, no matter what they themselves want. _Brandon..._

_No, this is wrong,_ he realises as Tristen turns blue, then white, feebly struggling against him. He will have the man's head as a raper, or have him sent to the Watch, but he will not murder him behind closed doors like an alleyway thief. He doesn't have that right. Ned is not one of those men.

He lets go, but it's too late. Lord Skyer falls to the floor, dead.

 


	10. After

Ned stares. He thinks that Tristen is going to get back up, like it's a joke of some sort, the sort Brandon used to pull back when they fought as children, only to feel horribly guilty when Ned, being Ned, took it too seriously. Cautiously, he kicks the body, but nothing happens.

Slowly it starts to sink in, and then he starts to sink onto Tristen's bed. _I have killed him._ Perhaps it should not horrify him so. After all, the man had committed a terrible crime, and Ned was his liege lord, so surely Ned had the right to take his life? _Yes, to take his life. To pass the sentence and swing the sword, like my father before me. Not to choke him to death in a fit of rage._

He knows, in truth, he cannot be punished for the murder. The only man who would even have the authority would be Robert, the king, and he wouldn't. Not to Ned. Not for this. _If he knew the truth, however..._

Cautiously, he turns his grey eye to Tristen's teal, still wide and bugging from its socket. They have such a distinctive look, the Skyers, so different from his own. _They may be my own though,_ he thinks. _Didn't Lord Bolton say their first lady was a Greystark? If so, does that make me a kinslayer?_ But the Starks wiped out the Greystarks a thousand years ago. Mayhaps he was already a kinslayer then, perhaps that tainted their blood forevermore.

_At least I have not broken guestright. It is an abomination for a host to kill his guests, or a guest to kill his hosts, but not one guest to kill another._

His thoughts are interrupted by the swing of a door open, and Ned jumps in a panic to see cold, bright, ice-blue eyes blinking at him, Lord Bolton quickly closing the door behind himself, and Ned is lost for words.

The man spots the corpse quickly, of course he does, there's no hiding it. His face bears no shock or outrage, for Ned isn't sure it can. He looks at Ned as if he's assessing whether a sheep is ready for slaughter. “Did you kill him?” he asks quietly.

Ned nods. “He confessed,” he says, and then despite knowing how foolish it is, that Roose Bolton is the last man in all the Seven Kingdoms he can trust, he can't stop the words falling out. “There were bones. His son had a bastard, but the bastard was born dead, because he had a pox. The same pox his father had, that's why Averick was born crippled. Amaeda had the bones, that was her proof. She said that was why Aleas killed himself. She said...”

Slowly, Bolton sits on the bed beside him, like some twisted parody of a father, or mayhaps a caring older brother. Ned feels like all his years have been stolen from him, like he is once more a scared, grieving seventeen year old boy wearing a lordship that was never meant for him. A boy who found having men such as Tristen Skyer around him such a comfort. “I see,” says Lord Bolton, and his mouth quirks ever so subtly, as if he's amused. “And such cruelty and dishonour brought you to rage?”

Ned nods again, looking back towards the body. “I don't know what to do now,” he admits.

“You've never had to hide a corpse before, have you?” Ned stares at him in shock, but Lord Bolton is right – he's killed men, many men, too many men, but none like this. He's slain enemies on the battlefield and fed the crows. He's taken men's heads for crimes and giving their bodies back to their grieving widows to bury, who always thanked him for the gesture, albeit through tears and gritted teeth. But he has not murdered before.

“Do I have to hide the corpse?” he wonders. “He was my bannerman. Only Robert could punish me, and he wouldn't...”

Ned is almost sure of that. And yet he knows he does not trust Robert like he once did, he hasn't for many years now.

“Indeed, you would face no justice for the murder,” and Ned flinches to hear someone else call it that. Perhaps that's why Bolton says it. “But it would... soil you, my lord. As that bastard of yours does.” A fury swells in him, because how dare he drag Jon into this, but that rage frightens him and so he holds his tongue. _Mayhaps Jon is already a part of this._ “But none of your bannermen care particularly that you have a bastard. They would care that you killed one of their own, no matter the reason. I'm sure many of them have their own dark secrets. They would trust you less. And a great lord needs his bannermen's trust.”

“Do you think I am the sort of man to lie and cheat to protect my _reputation_?” Ned spits.

“No, not at all. Not your reputation. But these scandals are never so exacting,” says Bolton. “Your whole family would be stained with the dishonour. Especially your son and heir. I've been observing him, and the boy is most admirable in many ways, but – he has a temper. Your bannermen would remember that, and wonder if he would make the same mistake you did.”

Ned shudders at the thought of Roose Bolton even looking at Robb, but he knows the man has a point. It's as like as not Robb would suffer more for this crime as he would, and that is not fair. His son shouldn't carry the burden of his actions.

He looks away again, back to Tristen's corpse. The man died erect, he realises to vague embarrassment, although he knows he is too old to blush at such things. Lyanna told him long ago that happens when men are strangled to death. Under the circumstances, it's rather fittting.

“You need not worry, my lord,” says Bolton. “I can deal with it.”

Ned looks back at him again, regaining something of his wits, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. _I cannot trust him._ “But why would you?” he asks. “Isn't it in your interest to have my reputation spoiled?”

“No.”

Lord Bolton gives him no further explanation than that, but the thing is, Ned does believe him. And he knows it should not reassure him. He feels as if he is making a trade, except he does not know what it is he's giving away.

He turns his head again, without answers either for or from anyone. “He was your foster brother,” he mutters.

“He was,” says Bolton, “but we were never close.”

Ned has no words for that, and so he remains silent. “Tell me, Lord Stark,” asks Lord Bolton, “did he say he'd had both children?”

Ned hesitates. “...No,” he admits. “He said he'd only had Amaeda, but he must have been lying, must have thought somehow I'd think it more acceptable for him to do that to his daughter than to his son, because – otherwise, the pox, the bones?”

“Mayhaps you are right,” says Lord Bolton. “Or mayhaps he did have his daughter, but not as she said, once she was a little older, closer to her mother's age when she and Lord Skyer first wed. Mayhaps she was more willing than she claimed, and perhaps she lay with Aleas and gave him the pox. Mayhaps that's why she hates her father so, blames him so. Because it is easier than blaming herself.”

Ned's stomach swirls in dread. He knows Lord Bolton does not believe that. And if he does, he doesn't care. He only says it so it can haunt Ned.

And it will.

* * *

In truth, he does not know what to expect when he wakes the next morning – he is exhausted, he tossed and turned all night, plagued with visions of Lord Skyer and Aleas and his father and Brandon and Lyanna. At the break of day, he almost woke screaming from a dream of Lyanna laying in her bed of blood, a pile of bones falling out of her and tearing her in half, but he managed to bite his pillow and smother the sound before he made one of his children come running – it is his duty to comfort them when they have nightmares, not the other way around.

When he wakes, he will not be at all surprised if he learns Lord Bolton has broken his trust, and everyone in the castle knows exactly what has happened to Lord Skyer. When he re-enters the hall, a place now grey, grim and somber in the morning light, he hears hushed voices and wonders how worried he should be. Lady Amaeda sits at the table now, not on the dais, her face white.

“Lord Stark,” Lord Rolland greets him, looking sheepish. “Morning. I, um, might have some bad news.”

“It seems my lord father has fled justice,” comments Amaeda, taking a sip of ale.

“He _hasn't_ ,” insists Averick, striking the table with his good hand. “This is all a mistake. He'll come back, I know he will. He wouldn't abandon me like that.”

Ned does his best not to flinch. _Perhaps he wouldn't, but he is not coming back._ Amaeda says nothing, and Roose Bolton quietly intercedes. “Forgive me, my lord, but I saw he had taken his valuables and many clothes. He would not do that if he didn't intend to be away a long time. Most likely, he is already on a ship to Braavos.”

“Shut up!” shouts Averick, and Ned is alarmed. Averick Skyer is but a young boy who loves his father dearly, and Ned doesn't want him falling afoul of the Boltons.

“Easy, son,” he says, walking over and placing a guilty hand on the boy's shoulder. Then he eyes Lord Bolton curiously. _What did you do with his belongings?_ he wonders. _Did you take them for yourself, or would that be too risky? Did you push them into the sea with his body?_

Averick pulls away from him, and looks at him furiously. “This your fault,” he says. “You said you were going to take him to trial, and he knew you'd believe whatever stupid lie she told you, so he had to run–”

“Perhaps if he fled justice, you might need to reconsider that,” Amaeda says, and Averick turns to glare at her. She sighs, avoiding his eye. “Look, Averick–”

“You've killed him,” Averick declares.

Amaeda blinks, genuinely bewildered. “What?”

“You've killed him!” he shouts, pushing himself up with one hand on the table. “That's why he's gone, he didn't leave me, you couldn't get Lord Stark to kill him for you so you did it yourself! Like you killed Mother! You _bitch_ , I'll kill you!”

Averick then starts struggling to get up and reach her, but it's not hard to hold him back, he's just a boy. Her hisses and spits like an animal while Ned holds him back. Amaeda swallows deeply, and Ned feels ill. _She could,_ he thinks.

Amaeda does look at her brother then, for a long time, and Ned hasn't the faintest idea what she's thinking. Then she turns to him. “Lord Stark, will I still have to attend trial in Winterfell?” she asks.

Ned hesitates, but in truth, he knows he can't do that. Not if he too has committed a secret crime no-one must know of. “No,” he says. “If your father has fled justice, I... am willing to take that as proof his accusations were baseless.”

That is nonsense, he knows it is, but Amaeda nods gratefully. “Thank you, my lord.” Averick is less pleased, and he turns to Ned with a stunned look.

“...You're in this with her,” he says, and Ned does his best not to flinch. The boy is not wrong exactly. “You've been plotted to get rid of him the whole time! How could you?! You're meant to be Warden of the North, how could you treat your bannermen like that, and _you_ –” he turns to Bran then, who looks both surprised and distressed to be dragged into this. “–You were part of it too, weren't you, it was your job to keep me distracted while they killed him! Is that the only reason you pretended to be my friend?!”

Bran looks like he could cry. “No, no of course not–”

Ned yanks Averick's arms back, mayhaps a little too hard, making the boy yelp faintly. _My son had nothing to do with this,_ he wants to say, but he knows that would be giving too much away. “You need to calm down,” he says quietly. “I understand how upset you are, but there is no conspiracy.” _I did not plan this. I am so sorry._

Averick does calm down, slowly, but he doesn't grow any less angry. He just gives up on his accusations, instead staring at the table in sullen silence. Ned sighs, and turns to Lord Rolland. “Under the circumstances, it's probably best we return to the North as soon as possible.”

“I'm not going anywhere with you,” Averick mutters.

“It's either leave with him, or be stuck here with me.” And Ned knows Amaeda is stuck here – he can't do anything to help her now. Lord Ennett has not come to breakfast, and he wonders if that is a blessing or a curse.

“...Fine,” Averick concedes, and pushes away his bowl of porridge. “I'm not hungry,” he says.

By his side, Robb sighs. “Alright then,” he says, putting a hand on Averick's shoulder. “Why don't we go pack then? It has to be done.”

Averick is still glowering, but he goes willingly. After all, he has no reason to hold this against Robb.

After everyone finishes their breakfasts they quickly disperse, no-one being in much of a mood for chatting. Before too long, Ned finds himself alone with Lady Amaeda again. He nods at her, and she gives him a sad smile.

“You know, I used to think Aleas must blame me,” she says. “He swore a thousand times he didn't, but I thought he must, because if I hadn't bled so young Father might never thought of doing it to either of us. It's what I would have done, I suppose. But Aleas was always better than me. He was the only one of us worth anything.”

Ned doesn't know what to say to that. He is still so very unsure. Even now, could she be lying and tricking him? What does she know? _Does she know I've killed her father for her? Or does she think he's escaped justice once again?_ “My lady–”

“It's alright, Lord Stark,” she tells him. “You did the best you could.”

* * *

The journey back to the Bluebell is uncomfortable, to say the least. The seas are choppier now, and Ned is as sick as his children. Lord Averick never speaks with them, he keeps to himself, and his father's men – his men now – remain ever-wary. Ned knows everyone involved is relieved when they dock in White Harbour.

When they make it back to Lord Averick's castle, the castellan – Ned can't remember his name, Erryk, perhaps? – greets them graciously, but he seems most confused by Tristen's absence. Ned thought everyone would have heard rumours of the scandal and disappearance by now, especially this close to White Harbour, but mayhaps not. “Has Lord Skyer been delayed on his journey, my lord?” asks the man.

Ned shakes his head. “No. Lord Skyer is... gone.” He chooses his words carefully, not wishing to lie any more than he must. “Most believe him to have fled to Braavos. Nonetheless, he is not returning. You should consider his son your lord now.”

Erryk, or whatever his name is, looks most confused. He turns to Averick, glaring sullenly at the ground. “Oh,” he says, voice full of pity and contempt. “Well, my lord, will you stay for dinner?” he asks, presumably thinking it will be easier to get answers out of Ned over a meal.

Before Ned can respond, Averick speaks: “No,” he says flatly, and looks up to meet Ned's eye. “This is my castle. And I will not have him here.”

Erryk looks alarmed, and leans down to whisper in Averick's ear. “My lord, this man is your liege.”

“Aye, the Lord of Winterfell, the Warden of the North.” And Averick spits upon the ground. “A disgrace to both titles. A disgrace to his family name. I will never call him my liege, never.”

Erryk grasps Averick firmly by the shoulder, and Ned can tell he's this close to slapping the boy. “Forgive him, my lord,” he implored Ned. “He is only a child. He knows not what he says.”

Ned nods. “I understand.” Averick is just a child, a lonely boy who grieves deeply his father, who Ned killed. The boy speaks treason, but Ned knows he could never bear to punish him for it. He feels heartsick enough as is. He feels heartsick, tired, and so very old. He wants to go home.

 


	11. Epilogue

Cat is glad when Ned comes back. She's missed him terribly, of course she has, and her children – she's spent as much time with Arya over the month as she can, but she didn't want to appear like she was squabbling with Snow for the girl's attention. That seemed beneath her, not to mention greatly unfair to Arya, dragging her into something so petty. She knows Arya much prefers spending time with her half-brother to her mother, which irritates her, but she knows her daughter well enough to know that trying to intervene with only make her favour him more stubbornly.

She's also relieved when Ned comes back, for she's started to hear foul whispers from the Three Sisters: there's been some scandal, an accusation of a crime, as well as a disappearance, perhaps a death. But the details change with every man who tells the tale, and sometimes when the same man tells the tale twice, which only worsens her anxiety. She even once hears it's Ned who's disappeared, which Maester Luwin tells her she has no reason to fear, but still she's deeply relieved when she gets word from White Harbor that her husband has reached their port and will be coming home soon. She'll be glad when Ned tells her what did happen, so she can stop wondering and fretting.

Of course, she should know better.

He's warm when he greets her, with Arya and Rickon by either side of her, and Greyjoy and Snow standing behind. _Look, he's fine,_ she is too tactful to say aloud, especially when Ned embraces her like that. You'd think he hadn't seen her in months. She's grateful for the affection, but still, she can tell by the look in his eye – something is wrong.

He doesn't explain it to her though, of course not, and he answers her small questions about what his trip was like as vaguely as he can. After a few days, Catelyn grows frustrated enough she decides to broach the subject herself.

"I heard rumours while you were away," she says just as she's about to leave his solar, having come in to ask some question about the children (or rather, to have an excuse so he wouldn't realise she'd come in just to pry). "I heard there was... some great scandal, during the wedding." Ned turns his head from her, staring out the window. "Ned? Did something happen?"

"I'd rather not talk about it."

Cat blinks. _Oh. Of course._ She tries not to be mad. _He'll tell you in his own time._ But in her experience, waiting for Ned to tell her things in his own time often means that time will be never.

"Cat," he says after a moment's hesitation, catching her off guard, "I wanted – I needed to ask you something – about Brandon–"

She looks away. "I'd rather not talk about Brandon." Perhaps that makes a hypocrite of her, but still – she knows how insecure Ned was they wed, how sure he was he must have been a disappointment compared to his brother. Sometimes she fears he still thinks that. Perhaps Brandon's ghost haunts him as much as Snow's mother does her. Cat doesn't want to bring that spectre back for him. She loved Brandon, or she thought she did when she was a rash and foolish maid of six and ten, all too eager to lose her maidenhead to this handsome, dashing man – but she _loves_ Ned, even if her first bedding was a little awkward, even if Jon Snow still stalks her halls, even if he keeps secrets from her. She loves him more than she could ever love his brother.

"...Alright," says Ned, staring out the window again. He gives no further response, and so Cat leaves, sighing. She tries not to be bitter that there is now one more part of her husband's life which she is forever locked out of.

* * *

Arya fully expects Sansa to spend the next month boring her with stories about the wedding. She's prepared for that. She's been practicing pretending to be interested with Jon. And so, when Sansa doesn't talk her ear off about how beautiful Lady Skyer was and how dashing her husband was and all the rest of it, it's weird. Not that she's all that interested, but still, did she master her listening face for nothing?

Sansa doesn't talk much at all when she gets back, and then Arya starts to worry. She heard rumours that _something_ happened at that wedding, although she never could figure out what, and whenever she tried asking Jon or Mother they both told her not to worry about it. Still, something didn't happen to Sansa, did it?

Jon raises an eyebrow when he catches her with thread and needle in hand, but she just throws a pillow at him and he backs off with a chuckle. It takes her most of the morning and she cuts her fingers open, but still, she gets it done.

“Sansa?” she knocks on her sister's door about midday, and finds her sitting at her looking glass, staring at her reflection. “I made you something.”

Sansa blinks in surprise, looking down at the embroidery. “It's lovely,” she says, which it really isn't – the threads are all crooked and she couldn't find enough brown so she used blue instead and a bit of her blood got on the cloth, but she did try. Then Sansa looks puzzled. “But why?”

Arya shrugs awkwardly, not wanting to give too much away, because Sansa might never let her forget it. “You haven't been talking to me. I thought you might be mad.” Except, Sansa never stops talking to her when she's mad. She shouts her ear off, and Arya knows how to deal with that, by shouting back. “I've been starting to worry,” she admits. “Sansa, are you... alright?”

Sansa looks away again. “I'm fine,” she mutters.

“Liar,” says Arya. “Was it... the wedding? Did something happen to you there?”

“No, no, not at all,” Sansa says quickly, “nothing happened to me, I just–”

She does not finish that sentence, leaving Arya to frown in greater confusion. “Was it Lady Amaeda?” she asks. “You wanted to meet her so much. Was she... not what you expected?”

Sansa hesitates. “She was... she was...” Her eyes drift back down to the embroidery. Then she looks back up at Arya, something cold in her eye, and Arya is unnerved. She feels like she does when she has to show her embroidery to Septa Mordane, or sing her mother's hymns, or dress up special for guests. She feels like she's being examined. Examined, and found wanting.

“...She was no true lady.”

* * *

Bran doesn't want to think about the whole thing. After all, no-one else is talking about it, so they must not be thinking about it either. It's all sad and confusing and something he knows he's too young to understand. He's still vaguely upset about what happened with Averick, but, he reasons, they weren't really friends – they didn't know each other very long, really, he's just too eager for company. He considered asking Maester Luwin to help him write a letter, but he didn't think he'd get a reply. He wouldn't know what to say anyway.

And he has company back home, he has brothers who can be nagged into taking him riding. “Come on, Robb, it'll be fun,” he says, pulling on Robb's sleeve childishly. To be fair, he is a child. “You and me and Jon can go and we'll race,” he insists, even though he's pretty sure he'd lose that race. Robb hesitates, and Bran pouts. “Theon can come too if you like?” Really, he doesn't understand why Robb likes Theon so much, but Bran will put up with him if he has to.

Robb sighs and smiles. “Alright,” he says. “Just wait here while I go tell Father. I'll get in trouble if he doesn't know where we are.”

Bran frowns. “Aren't you old enough you're allowed out on your own?”

“Yes, but I'm not quite old enough they'll leave you alone with me. Not for too long.”

Bran doesn't actually wait while Robb goes to find Father. He should, but waiting is boring, and he doesn't think his brother would really mind, so instead he follows Robb to the solar. _Maybe they'll talk about something important if they think I'm not listening._ For that reason, he doesn't go in, he just waits outside the door and listens.

“Bran wanted to go riding, so I thought me and Jon and Theon could take the saddles and...”

“Fine,” Father murmurs, sounding rather distracted. And tired. As Bran pokes his head around the corner, he can see Robb frown.

“You... do you want to join us?”

Father shakes his head. “I have too much work, Robb,” he says, even though he's staring out the window and that doesn't look much like working to Bran.

“Oh. Of course.” Robb says, and then hesitates. Bran frowns also. Why isn't Father looking at Robb while they talk? Is that a lord thing? “Father, are you – alright?”

Father sighs deeply. “I'm afraid I've made a terrible mistake,” he says.

Bran blinks. _Like what?_ he wants to ask, but then he remembers he's not meant to be listening. Does he feel guilty for letting Lady Amaeda go? Did he let Lord Skyer go? What is happening? “Father, if this is about the wedding,” says Robb, “I'm sure you did the right thing.”

“You have no idea what I did do,” says Father. “If you think whatever I did is right just because I did it you're a damn fool.”

Bran flinches. _That was mean._ Robb's eyes drop down to the floor. “Sorry father,” he says.

Father sighs. “No, Robb, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped.” He finally turns around, and gives Robb a smile. It's not a very convincing smile. “Go ride with your brothers. Have a nice time.”

Robb nods and turns to leave, finding Bran as soon as he does so. He frowns. “Were you eavesdropping?”

“No,” Bran says, but then he remembers that is what you call it when you hide outside of people's doors to listen to them talk without them knowing you're there. “...Maybe.”

Robb chuckles, and guides him out of Father's earshot. “Is something wrong with Father?” he asks. “He was sort of mean to you.”

“Huh? No, I'm sure he's fine,” says Robb. “He's just very busy, and I think that whole wedding... it took a lot out of him. But he'll be fine. He's Father.”

Robb says that, but still, he has a troubled look on his face. Bran frowns. “Is there something wrong with you?” he asks.

Robb looks at him a moment, seemingly stunned by the question, but then he smiles and shakes his head. “I'm fine.”

* * *

Jon finds his father in the crypts. He's just got back from riding with Robb and Theon and Bran, and he knows he should go wash, but he's a little worried now. Robb acted strange all through their ride, although Theon did his best to distract him – apparently Greyjoy is good for something – and when those two weren't listening Bran whispered in his ear that Father had been acting strange too, and he'd upset Robb. That was odd. That's not like Father at all.

Part of him still thinks he shouldn't meddle, he's not a Stark, it's not his place to get involved in Stark family politics, but he almost always is. He still mislikes the crypts though, even in his waking hours, still gets that unnerving feeling that they may swallow him in their darkness, but after he checked the godswood he couldn't think of where else Father would go. Indeed, he finds his father in front of his aunt Lyanna's statue, he feels stupid for having not thought of that first thing.

Father stands at a strange angle though, Jon notes, as if he's trying to face his sister while turning his back to his father and brother. That's odd. “Father?” he asks.

“Jon.” Father jumps slightly when he hears him, although he hides it well. He seems puzzled, and almost looks back over his shoulder to the statue, but stops himself at the last minute. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for you,” he says. “Bran was worried.” Jon decides to leave out the rest.

Father sighs and smiles at him. “Tell him I'm sorry,” he says, “I didn't mean to worry any of you. I've just... it's been a long day.”

_A long month, more like._ Jon has no idea what happened at that wedding, but he knows it's left everyone on edge. Apparently, the Skyers have a new lord now, although he doesn't know what happened to the old one. Still if he was a friend of Father's, that would explain his mood.

Father is staring at the statue again. “I thought... if I saw her... if I could talk to her...” And Jon's heart aches for him; he knows how much Father loved his sister, and that he still grieves her deeply. Jon can't imagine how he would feel if something happened to Arya, or Sansa, or Robb, or Father. Father sighs. “But she's gone.”

Then he walks over to Jon, putting a fatherly arm around his shoulder, guiding him away. “Come now, Jon,” he says. “I want to go pray in the godswood first, but then we'll all go eat together.”

* * *

A man kneels in the godswood. A good man, a pious man, a humble man. He prays to the Old Gods, his gods, and his father's gods, the gods of a thousand generations before him. He asks questions.

He gets no answers.

 


End file.
